


just so long and long enough

by andibeth82



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M, Family Issues, Post-Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), Relationship Issues, Slow Burn, Sometimes marriage is just not right for everyone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-05
Updated: 2017-10-05
Packaged: 2019-01-09 08:51:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12273027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andibeth82/pseuds/andibeth82
Summary: “You know I don’t like change,” Clint starts. “And thingschanged. I was home, but I wasn’t working. You were gone, but you were gone more than just not being there because you were working. And then suddenly, we’re balls to the wall fucked with Ultron, and everyone is seeing something with you and Banner that I have no clue about. And the more I think about, the more it should make sense, but...I’m used to having my wife and my best friend. And knowing there was someone else in the mix...I didn’t like it. I didn’t not want you to be available.”Natasha’s sharp intake of breath sounds louder than usual in the aftermath of his words. “What are you trying to say, Clint?”





	just so long and long enough

**Author's Note:**

> Y'all know I am the biggest supporter of Clint/Laura. That hasn't and won't change. And so, in some sense, this has been a bit difficult to write, because I love Laura as a character and as a person in Clint (and Natasha's) life.
> 
> But I'm always looking for different ways to explore my favorites, and I think there's something to be said about a Clint Barton who can't quite settle down into a domestic life -- and who maybe (just maybe) is actually still in love with that girl he rescued from Russia so many years ago.
> 
> This is that story. It's a story about compromises, about how far you can push yourself when you love someone, about what happens to a couple when there are different priorities and rocky things to deal with in a marriage. It doesn't end tied up in a nice bow, for a reason, but that's something that I think is worth talking about.
> 
> Thank you beyond words to @anothercover, who held my hand and listened to my babbling and helped me out with writer's block so much. You rock, lady.
> 
> “deeds cannot dream what dreams can do  
> —time is a tree (this life one leaf)  
> but love is the sky and i am for you  
> just so long and long enough”  
> \- e.e. cummings

“Shit.”

It’s best laid plans gone bad -- his intention of opening the door quietly, despite a long gash that runs down his arm, is shot to shit when he misses the handle in the dark and then has to right himself while fumbling with bloody fingers, smearing red over the doorknob. He finally gets the door open, beads of sweat rolling down his forehead and cheeks, and bites down on a cry of pain as his arm chooses that exact moment to remind him that he didn’t really take care of his wound.

The house is dark and quiet and Clint looks around blearily, trying to make sure everything is how he’s left it. Toys in the hallway -- check. Laura’s cup of tea from before bed, sitting by the sink because she likely hadn’t had a chance to wash it -- check. Lila’s pretend plastic purse on the table, because she needed to “leave it out like mommy does” -- check.

It’s enough, and he collapses onto the couch with a grunt, trying not to get blood all over the upholstery. He’s already been in enough trouble this week for breaking a lamp when he came home similarly late, trying to sneak in without being seen or heard.

“Oh, Clint.”

He opens his eyes at the soft voice, the small sigh, and sees Laura standing at the bottom of the stairs. She’s holding her round stomach and looking at him forlornly, a thick crease between her brows, and he manages to smile despite the pain.

“Uh. Welcome home?”

 

***

 

“You can’t keep doing this,” Laura says as she cleans Clint’s gash, trying to be as gentle as possible.

“Coming home late?” Clint asks, even though he knows he’s being cheeky. Laura sighs, her eyes dipping to the floor, littered with remnants of bloodied bandages, as well as his shirt.

“Sneaking out. Running around. Doing things that get you hurt. You need to _do_ something.”

“What do you call what I’m doing now?” he asks defensively, partly because he’s annoyed and partly because he’s really fucking sore.

“Coping,” Laura says shortly. “Unless you have another word to call running around getting a high from finding bad guys to capture.”

He doesn’t, really, so he can’t say anything that will make her think differently.

“Sorry.”

Laura rolls her eyes. “What are you going to tell the kids this time?” she asks instead of accepting his apology. Clint winces, and not because of the pain.

“Working on the barn again, I guess. Fell off a ladder.”

“And cut your arm so badly that you needed a huge bandage?” Laura asks pointedly.

Clint makes a face. “I fell on a rake or something. I dunno, Laura, I’ll figure it out when I wake up. Okay?”

Laura gives him a look that’s a cross between _why do I bother_ and _I’m too tired to argue with you_.

“You’re upset,” Clint observes as she finishes wrapping his arm. “You know that I don’t want to make you upset.”

Laura gets up from the toilet seat, a slow rise given the baby she’s carrying in her belly, and runs her hands under cold water. “We had an agreement, remember? When I was nice enough to indulge these little benders? You go out, you take care of things quietly and under the radar with no killing or outright hurting, and you’re home and here the rest of the time.”

“I’m _doing_ that,” Clint replies, joining her at the sink.

“No,” Laura replies, washing her hands more vigorously. “You’re not. Because when you come home hurt and injured enough times that our children start to ask questions, you’re not living any kind of normal life that I can justify allowing you to continue.”

It’s the first time she’s really thrown down the gauntlet like this, and truthfully, he’s surprised it’s taken her this long. He knew she’d never really bought the “retired” bit he fed Natasha and his team and the world; she knew him too well to assume he could ever be serious about that. When he had approached her about an idea he was mulling over that might help him be more present at home and less distracted about what he’s missing by not being in the field, he had expected her to say no. She hadn’t, though. She had just made him promise that he would keep his “activities” quiet, so that his kids didn’t think he was running off again.

But it’s not the first time since that promise that he’s come home with a broken arm, or a sprained knee, or a bruise that’s made Cooper look at his dad strangely while eating morning pancakes.

Clint looks over at his wife; she looks older and more tired than she had even the day before and he hates that, because Laura’s always held their life together so much better than he has. Laura’s always been the one who has been able to be the “give it all mother” while he was running around spearing aliens and kicking down bad guys with Natasha. Hell, she was almost nine months pregnant and _still_ holding the family together with more glue than he could manage.

“One more night,” he promises as Laura reaches for a hand towel, wringing water off her fingers. She turns and raises an eyebrow.

“I’ll believe it when I see it.”

Clint bites down on his tongue as she leaves the bathroom and finishes washing up himself, quickly brushing his teeth one-handed before he joins her in the bedroom.

“Hey.” He closes the door and sits down on the bed, being careful of his injury. “I’m serious. One more night, okay?”

Laura meets his eyes, and Clint thinks she looks a little sad.

“Okay.”

 

***

 

He tries. He really tries.

 _One more night_ , he had promised Laura. _One more night_ , he had told himself while he tried to sleep before giving in and taking pain meds.

It’s the same domestic routine as always, the one he really does love in a way he couldn’t explain to a lot of people -- wake up, get the kids out of bed, make sure Laura didn’t need anything that she couldn’t get herself. Drive Cooper and Lila to school, pick up a few things at the store, come home and help clean the house, spend time with his children before dinner, read five kiddie books, shower, rinse, repeat. Deep down, he knows he doesn’t take for granted the fact that he’s finally able to do stuff like this on a daily basis without running around.

Which is why he feels absolutely terrible when his eyes start straying to the clock, counting down the hours before his kids go to bed and he can grab his bow and run off and do some recon.

Laura sees it, too -- he knows he can’t hide the guilt, the same way she can’t hide her frustration. He hates that they’ve reached that carefully constructed almost breaking point of tip-toeing around the things they can’t quite say, because they’re both trying to be respectful of the situation without wanting to admit something is wrong.

It’s been mostly quiet when he goes out, and tonight he’s tracking a couple of random thugs who are just terribly bad at what they do. It would annoy him, if he cared more, but all he really cares about is getting to snarl at a couple of guys, look menacing, and throw a few harmless punches. It’s only later when he gets in his car and drives home, midwestern plains stretching on either side of him with infinite precision, that he finds himself stopping at the open field near the farm, taking out his bow and shooting into the sky with precision and dexterity.

There are occasions, such as more recently, when he’d go a little harder -- fight a little dirtier, follow a little more intensely, end up with the broken fingers and stab wounds. But for now, it’s just about the rush that he’s been missing and yearning for, the side of himself that he can’t show or access when he’s in his safe farmhouse with his safe family.

That rush is fading, though. And maybe it’s the fact that he’s running out of arrows or getting bored or that things are just too tame, but _something_ pushes him to search out a tall tree near the edge of the road. He puts his bow on the ground and starts to climb slowly, being mindful of his strength in his injured arm, wrapping his fingers around feeble branches. He goes higher and higher and higher, and the ground disappears into darkness beneath him, until he feels like he can touch the stars that are sparkling overhead.

A voice inside his head warns him that he should stop before he goes any farther, but he ignores it. When he reaches for a branch and misses, his foot swings out dangerously from underneath him; he manages to regain his balance but only for a second before losing his grip completely. As he falls, he knows he’s gone too far, and he knows he’s going to get in trouble.

But the thing is, he also knows that if he wasn’t going to be seriously hurt at the end of this, he would get right back up and do it all over again.

 

***

 

Clint opens his eyes slowly, letting intensely bright light stab his vision, and -- _oh. Drugs._ Definitely drugs, because his body feels like it’s floating and there’s pain, but it’s a warm pain, and he doesn’t realize he’s trying to move until Laura’s face appears above him. She looks upset, and also pissed, and Clint doesn’t blame her.

He tries to figure out where he is by looking around, because he knows he’s not in his own bed. He averts his eyes from Laura’s face and scans the room, which he comes to realize is definitely a hospital room, and then his eyes land on Natasha.

_Well, shit._

“Broken rib, sprained ankle, dislocated shoulder. And you reopened that wound from the other day,” Natasha starts, not giving him a chance to ask why she’s here and what’s happened. “Laura called me. She said you fell off the roof while working on the barn.”

He gets it -- he knows Laura lied to Natasha because she thought she needed to protect him -- but he wants to laugh, because whatever she told Natasha, she wasn’t going to believe anyway. Open book aside, and as accident prone as he was, Natasha would never believe that Clint, retired from the superhero game, just randomly _fell off a roof._ And Laura knew that.

He curbs his amusement; even if he wanted to laugh, he couldn’t, because broken ribs were literally no laughing matter.

“Well, I’m alive,” he croaks out. “Can I go home now?”

Natasha thins her lips, and Laura’s own eyes narrow.

“You’re staying here. Observation, by order of the doctor. Mom took the kids for the night, and she’ll bring them to school tomorrow.”

The calmness of Laura’s voice is enough for Clint to know that this is more than just her being mad at him, and he turns his head to look at her more easily. “I had to make my last night count.”

“Cut the bullshit, Clint,” Laura says angrily. “I was willing to be forgiving when you got hurt from doing this stuff, but this is taking it too far. I’m not sitting around so I can watch my husband try to kill himself just because he’s retired.”

Clint groans. “Seriously, that’s what you think I’m doing? Come on, Laura.” He looks over at Natasha. “Nat, really, is that what you believe? That I’m some depressed suicidal guy who needs a rush?”

“I think we both know that if you were, you’d know ten thousand surer ways to get to that white light other than falling out of a tree,” Natasha answers levelly, not meeting Laura’s eyes. She pauses. “You’re under medical observation, not any sort of psychotic break watch. I’m staying at the house tonight. I’ll be back to get you tomorrow.”

Laura does at least kiss him before she leaves, so there’s that -- Clint’s learned by now if she can show affection, she’s not as mad as she looks or acts. He tries to sleep, and is somewhat successful thanks to the drugs coursing through his system. When Natasha comes back to sign him out the next day, however, he’s back to being grumpy and sore.

“You did this to yourself,” Natasha says as she helps him into the car. “Don’t expect me to have sympathy for you.”

“I really did fall out of a tree!” Clint protests, groaning as he tries to move against the seat belt. “Ow, _fuck_.”

Natasha raises an eyebrow. “I never said I didn’t believe you. I find it hard to believe there’s anything else you could do in Iowa that would injure you like this, unless you really _did_ fall off a roof or something.”

Clint blows out a frustrated breath. “I’m not a fucking basket case, Tasha.”

“Clint.” Natasha looks over as she turns the car key, her eyes gentle and forgiving. “I know you’re not.”

He wonders if she knows because she understands it -- the need to be out there fighting, to keep doing what he’d done for so many years. Natasha knew him the best of anyone, and Clint doesn’t doubt that she knows what he’s going through, even though it looks a certain way to everyone else. But he can’t help feeling frustrated, because he knows it’s not the same. Natasha had become a part of his family, but she’d never been forced to find that balance. She could come and leave as she pleased, and she did. It was the best of both worlds, in Clint’s eyes: she had the love of his kids, the respect of his wife, hell, she had the respect of everyone SHIELD had ever employed. But she could have all that and still go out and do what she was trained to do without feeling bad about missing a birthday, without feeling guilty about not being home to take someone to school, without having to make a very distinct choice between domestic civilian life and a danger-filled one.

He couldn’t make that choice, and it sucked.

“For what it’s worth, I’m surprised it took you this long to land yourself in a hospital,” Natasha continues as they drive. “I mean, you’re not exactly someone who does things halfway.”

Clint snorts, and then curses again as his ribs scream. Natasha glances at him, but doesn’t quite take her eyes off the road.

“I have more painkillers, if you need them --”

“Don’t need them,” he grunts, because he knows if he says it out loud she’ll drop it. She hates meds as much as he does, but they both trust each other when it comes to making decisions, so long as they’re lucid.

“Okay,” Natasha responds easily. “Laura’s taking Cooper and Lila to the library after school, and she’ll have them home for dinner. That gives us, oh --” She looks down at the digital clock on the dashboard, “about four hours or so to get _you_ home and figure out what you’re going to tell them about your latest misadventure.”

“Great,” Clint says, rolling down the window with his good hand. “Don’t suppose they’re going to buy the whole barn thing I’ve been telling them for the past few nights.”

Natasha hums under her breath, and Clint takes the silence as an obvious answer.

“So, uh.” He tries to concentrate on the road ahead of him. “How’s Banner?”

Natasha turns to glare at him, and the car swerves. “Fine,” she says so curtly that Clint knows pressing her will only make her angrier. He decides to change the subject to something more amicable.

“How’s it going in New York?”

Natasha’s hands tighten and then relax around the steering wheel. “Training is going well, I think. They’re a good bunch. Not really a team, though. Not yet.”

Clint knows what she’s saying without saying it. She’d been fine, until he screwed up so badly that she had to be relegated to babysitting duties. She’d been fine, until her own life had been interrupted in order to take care of his. He instantly feels guilty, because he knows that she’s only here because Laura had called her, and Laura wouldn’t have called her unless she was at the end of her rope.

But Laura wasn’t the only one who could force Natasha to make decisions.

“Did Fury make you come here? Maria?”

Natasha doesn’t answer, and the silence is a confirmation of what he’s suspected.

“Fuck.”

“Don’t be like that, Clint.”

“Yeah, well.” He tries and fails to keep the bitterness out of his voice. “It’s not fair that your life is getting derailed because of me.”

The car rolls to a stop at a light, and Natasha reaches over and puts a hand on his knee. “I want to be here, you know. I do. But I don’t want to be here because you’re making stupid decisions. We both know you’re smarter than that.”

“Tash, I’m not --” He stops, because he realizes he can’t even tell her otherwise. He can’t tell Laura otherwise. He _had_ been making stupid decisions; injuries aside, Laura had never told him he couldn’t return to Natasha. She had never stopped him from having the life he wanted -- not when he’d come home almost dead, not when he’d angered her by walking out during an important dinner. _He_ had made the commitment to retire, and in his mind, that had made everything black and white, because he had hung up his bow and his uniform, and that had made him either a father or an archer.

He’d never figured out how to be one without the other. And he knows his exploration of that balance has been piss-poor.

Clint winces as his shoulder stings, and he breathes through the pain as Natasha presses the gas pedal and pulls onto the long road that leads to the farm.

“So what am I going to tell the kids?”

 

***

 

He tells them that while he was out shopping, an old enemy jumped him and attacked him, because it’s the only thing he can think of to explain his more serious injuries.

Cooper looks interested, but skeptical. Lila looks scared, and immediately asks in a trembling voice if monsters are coming to get her. That only makes Clint feels worse, because he could handle making Natasha and Laura feel bad, but making his daughter feel like she couldn’t sleep at night made him want to punch a wall.

“I have a proposition for you,” Natasha says later that night, while Laura is putting the kids to bed. Clint is on the couch, trying to relax as much as he can given that it’s hard for him to be comfortable, his shoulder is aching and pulsing. The fact that it had been re-set meant nothing because his arm was still in a sling, which means he has to hold his coffee in his non-dominant hand. Fortunately, it’s one of the many times being ambidextrous is coming in handy.

“I’m listening,” he replies, even though he doesn’t really want to listen. It’s the least he can do, however, given that he’s already caused everyone in his life so much annoyance. Natasha hands over a folder, and Clint opens it up. He lets his eyes scan the first few lines and decides he doesn’t need to read anything else.

“Absolutely not.”

Natasha looks pained, in as much as Natasha Romanoff can look pained.

“At least consider it,” she implores.

"I have considered it. And I'm saying no." Clint gives her a hard stare. "What part of the word _retired_ don't you understand?"

"Uh, the part where you go out and find bad guys to take down,” Natasha replies, her eyes not leaving his. Clint blows out a hard breath, feeling the air whoosh through his teeth.

“Nat, come on. Yeah, I go out and shoot, and I’ve made bad decisions, but I don’t need to be a fucking _parent_.” He pauses, narrowing his eyes. “Did Laura put you up to this? Because she’s upset about stuff?”

Natasha’s eyes dip towards the ground, and if Clint wasn’t so annoyed, he would be amused at how transparent Natasha could be when it came to being around his family.

“Well, that’s fucking awesome.”

“Maximoff,” Natasha says, not addressing his anger, because she’s as good as changing the subject as he is, only better. “She’s part of the reason you’re alive, and she respects you. She looks up to you. It would mean a lot for you to come back and teach her how to do what you do.”

“I thought _you_ were supposed to be the one doing the training,” Clint responds pointedly.

“I am,” Natasha says. “But I want you to help. Come back to New York with me. You’ve got a place to stay, somewhere that’s safe, and when you want to go out and get a rush, there are a ton of spaces where you can do so without getting hurt. We even have a state-of-the-art gym. With safety mats.”

Clint ruminates over Natasha’s words. “What about Wilson? Rhodes, that dude with the mind gem? Why don’t I have to worry about them?”

“Vision,” Natasha supplies. “And Sam and Rhodes. Steve can work with them separately. They’re used to being in battle, and they need an experienced leader to show them how to refine their skills. Wanda...I think you know that she needs guidance and trust more than she needs to learn how to throw a successful punch.”

Clint adjusts himself carefully on the couch. “What makes you think I’m going to be any good at this, if I decide to do it?”

“Because you’re my partner,” Natasha replies. “And I think you’re a little lost right now, and I think this is a way for you to remember what it means to actually be an Avenger.”

Clint chews his tongue. “I don’t know, Nat.”

“Just think about it,” Natasha says. “Give it some consideration, okay Clint? It’s a way for you to do what you want to do without coming home looking like you went to hell and back.”

“And it’s a way for you to do this with me, so we can be together again?” Clint asks without thinking about it. The way Natasha looks at him, eyes awash with tiny particles of guilt, tells him all that he needs to know. He’s not really surprised; Barton and Romanoff came as a pair, and there was a reason that you needed a waiting list to even sit in on one of their training sessions. Not that Natasha by herself or Clint by himself was any different -- they still garnered an amazing amount of respect. But if they were training separately, it was usually because of a specific reason. Because Clint had to be home to take care of the baby, first Cooper then Lila, because Natasha had gotten hurt and couldn’t get out of the hospital in time, because this mission absolutely _had_ to have one of them and not the other. It was the norm, when it happened, but also, it wasn’t the norm at all.

“I’m not going to lie and say that it would make me feel better to have you there,” Natasha says slowly. “You know that. But I’m not…” She trails off, looking around the kitchen, and Clint knows what she’s going to say -- what she doesn’t need to say.

_I’m not going to force you to leave your family just so you can be with me._

“Well.” Clint swallows. “I suppose you’re also going to tell me it’s safer.”

“Not at all,” Natasha replies flatly. “I think it’s going to be more dangerous, actually. Wanda’s a kid. She doesn’t know what the hell she’s doing. She’s not us -- she’s not even someone like Rogers, who was out of the fight for seventy years and then thrown back in. She’s going to probably make mistakes and you’re going to have to be there for her, and put yourself in harm’s way while doing it.” She pauses. “ _That’s_ your rush, Clint. A safer rush than you’ve been trying to find. Take it or leave it, but I’m going back at the end of the week, and I won’t ask you to come with me if you’ve made up your mind to stay.”

 

***

 

Clint thinks about it. He knows there’s no real reason to say _no_ , but there’s not really a reason to say _yes_ , either.

“Natasha talked to me,” he says by way of bringing the subject up, even though he knows that Laura is already aware. Hell, knowing that Laura suggested this whole thing makes him realize that Natasha probably went to Laura long before he landed himself in the hospital. “About coming back to New York.”

Sure enough --

“I know,” Lara says calmly, so calmly Clint knows there’s no way she _couldn’t_ have been aware of this. “It was my idea. I thought it might be good for you to spend time with Wanda, after what happened.”

It’s probably true, but it’s not the whole truth, and they both know it.

“It means I’ll be away from you again,” he says reluctantly as he watches her make the bed, because apparently he’s decided morning chores are a good time to talk about this. Morning chores also meant that the kids stayed far away from their bedroom and any other part of the upstairs, because god forbid they risked being told to clean their room or fold some clothes.

“Yes,” Laura says sadly, and the tone of her voice doesn’t make Clint feel any better about his decision.

“I just got back. I said I was done...I just got back and now I’m leaving you again,” he says helplessly.

“I’ll make it work,” Laura responds. “It’s not like you being away is something new I have to get used to.”

“Yeah, but that’s not the point.” He hates that he can’t even help her with household chores when she’s the one who can barely move. He feels like a lump standing here with his arm still mostly out of commission and his chest aching. “I _said_ I wouldn’t go away.”

“I know,” Laura says with a small sigh. She pulls down a sheet corner. “And I was happy about that. I wanted you to stop leaving. But if you do go, you’ll be a lot happier, at least for a little while. And I wouldn’t have to worry about you getting hurt.”

Clint swallows against a dry throat. “You think I’m not happy here?”

“Is that what I said?” The frustration in Laura’s voice has now hit a peak, and Clint can tell it’s about five seconds away from boiling over. He decides to dial back the heat on the stove. It’s not worth fighting about this, especially if he only has a small pocket of time left here.

“No. I know.”

Laura carefully steps away from the bed. “I think you _are_ happy here,” she continues gently. “I know you love me and that you love our kids. I don’t doubt that. I _can’t_ doubt that, Clint, not after all these years. But you’re dealing with something that I can’t help with. I’ve been trying, I have. I’ve given you free reign to go do what I think will make you happy, but I know it’s still not enough.” She shrugs. “So maybe you can find that with Natasha, and with Wanda, if you train her.”

“And what are you going to do if I don’t go?” Clint asks. “Make me see a shrink?”

Laura shakes her head and gives him a look. “I think you need a lot of things in your life right now, Clint, but I don’t think you need to see a shrink.”

He nods, and Laura goes back to making the bed. It feels strangely awkward, and Clint knows there’s no reason for it to be, and it frustrates him.

“I’m, um. I’m going to go take a nap,” he says, motioning to the stairs. Laura fluffs a pillow.

“Okay,” she says with a smile. “Yell if you need anything.”

He walks back downstairs and steps over Cooper, who is reading on the middle step -- why he chooses there of all places to make himself comfortable Clint will never understand, but he used to hide in unconventional spots when he was little, so he’ll never say anything -- and when he walks into the living room, he sees Natasha sitting on the floor. She’s reading a magazine, and Lila is coloring next to her.

For a moment, he stops and stares, trying to imagine this kind of life -- the life he’s supposed to want. Sitting around, making grocery lists and cleaning the house. Running out to the store at the last minute so he can get groceries and grill on the porch. Taking the kids to the Renaissance Fair, laughing at them in their costumes, taking pictures that he puts in an album sometime later. Being a part of the family, not thinking of fighting, not thinking of the next big thing. His eyes burn as he thinks of Cooper, reading on the steps, content with his fantasy stories, and Lila, innocent as anything, taking pleasure in her imagination.

“Clint?” Natasha’s looking at him curiously, and he realizes he’s been standing in front of her but not saying anything. “Is everything okay?”

“Just thinking,” he answers, forcing his legs to move. “Mind if I nap for a bit? Laura’s making the bed.”

Natasha nods and pulls Lila away from his path, situating her closer to her legs. Lila looks up and smiles, waving a piece of paper in the air.

“Daddy, I drew you!” she announces with a smile, and Clint manages to catch a glimpse of her artwork before he lies down.

It’s him holding a bow, and Laura behind him, smiling widely. But Clint isn’t smiling -- Lila’s drawn him with a straight-lined mouth, the kind of expression he’s seen Natasha wear when she’s had enough of his bullshit.

The rest of the day, he’s unsettled, and he can’t get the image out of his mind.

“Do you think I’m a bad father?” Clint asks while Natasha is pouring him an after-dinner drink. She looks up and blinks in surprise.

“I think you’re a stupid father,” Natasha says, smiling. “And you have terrible dad jokes. But no, I don’t think you’re a _bad_ father. Why are you asking?”

Clint accepts the drink she holds out, running his finger over the rim of the glass. “No reason,” he lies, as Lila’s drawing flashes through his brain. “Just curious.”

Natasha arches her brow. “That is so entirely unconvincing, it’s pathetic.”

Clint rolls his eyes and looks around, finding Lila’s drawing taped to the fridge. He yanks it off and hands it to Natasha.

“Lila made this today,” he says shortly. “Notice anything?”

Natasha takes the drawing and stares at it. “Well, she got your profile down,” she says dryly. Clint groans so harshly he’s sure he’s going to break his ribs all over again.

“I’m serious.”

Natasha sighs and trades the drawing for his drink. “Is that why you think you’re a bad father? Because of how you look to a six-year-old?”

Clint shakes his head. “Not just that,” he says slowly. “I don’t want my kids to think that I don’t want to be here. I do, you know that I do. But I just...I want to be somewhere else, too.”

“Well.” Natasha puts a hand on his arm. “Maybe this will be good for you. You can take care of some people that need you...and it’ll _almost_ be like being home. But you’ll also get to feel useful in the way that you’ve been missing.”

“Yeah.” Clint looks at Lila’s drawing, and tries to smile. “Yeah.”

 

***

 

Clint wakes up in the middle of the night because he can’t sleep, and because tossing and turning doesn’t lend itself well to healing injuries. When Laura wakes along with him, he’s already migrated to the large window across from the bed, and he’s staring out at the front of the house -- the porch and the wide lawn and the big open sky.

“I think I’m going to go with Nat,” he says quietly when he hears her shuffling softly across the floor behind him. “Back to New York.”

“Okay,” Laura says just as quietly, wrapping her hands around his waist, and the fact that she doesn’t even change her voice makes Clint realize she’s known what his choice would be all along. But, like she’d always done, she was giving him the respect of having him say it and own it.

It should make things better, knowing that Laura was doing what Laura always did -- understanding, accepting, trying to make it work. They had both learned long ago that yelling and arguing and forceful pulling back of either of their personal lives wasn’t the way to do things. Laura knew that when she married a SHIELD agent, she told him all the time -- his job came first, but she had a right to her feelings. Clint knew that when he married a civilian who he fell in love with at a random jaunt to a state fair -- his job came first, but he would never put it before his family.

It didn’t mean it didn’t suck, though. Because sometimes -- most of the time -- especially nights like this -- as much as he felt a pull in both directions and maybe in one direction a little more than the other, it really, _really_ sucked.

“I’ll miss you.”

“Me too,” he says, leaning back against her waist. His head arches against her round stomach. “I want to be back for him. For us.”

“Well, I would hope so,” Laura says, seemingly affronted. “If you’re not, I’ll go to New York and drag you out of there myself.”

“You’re gonna fight Nat for me, huh?”

It’s a joke, and something they can talk about freely, now that it had been years. But the moment he says it, he feels Laura’s breathing pattern change, and he wonders if he’s overstepped. He did feel that way, sometimes -- like he was choosing one over the other, like he had to decide if he wanted to be “Clint Barton, husband” or Clint Barton, partner” because both words meant the same thing, technically, but they were also completely different.

For her part, Laura had been Laura and had told him he shouldn’t think about it like that. She loved Nat, she was her best friend, and she had been for years. Laura got it, because she knew how close you had to be with someone if you lived long enough to earn five or ten years in this company, unless you were pushing papers in the basement. Laura knew Clint’s relationship with Natasha was unlike anything she’d ever seen in a work relationship, but also, Clint’s job was unlike anything she’d ever seen on a resume, so it hadn’t mattered.

“Sorry,” he apologizes. “I didn’t mean it like that. I won’t go if you think I shouldn’t.”

“No,” Laura responds. “You should go. I think this is what we both need, right now.”

“I really don’t --”

Laura hums quietly, the vibration traveling through her bones and stomach. “Yes. You do.”

Clint closes his eyes against the landscape that encompasses everything he holds close and safe.

“Yeah. I do.”

 

***

 

Lila cries when Clint sits down and pulls her onto his lap and says he has to leave again. Clint wipes her eyes with the sleeve of his shirt and sings her favorite song about unicorns, but it doesn’t really help.

Cooper doesn’t cry, but he gives Clint a disappointed look, and that’s almost worse.

Laura doesn’t cry either, but there are tears in her eyes, and Clint has to wipe them away. She passes them off as “dumb baby hormones” but Clint knows better. It’s never been easy when he goes away, and this time -- having made the claim that he’s home for good, only to essentially double back on that promise -- is worse.

“I’ll call every night,” he promises as he hugs her. “Every single fucking night. I swear. Like when I started at SHIELD. You won’t be able to get rid of me.”

Natasha stands semi-awkwardly by the door, watching the departure rituals in silence. Cooper, perhaps sensing the slight discomfort, runs up and hugs her around the waist when he’s done glaring at Clint, and Lila walks over and clings to her leg.

Clint gets it. It’s not like they had expected to see her again so soon, and now _she_ was leaving, too. His kids meant more to Natasha than he suspects she’ll ever really believe, even though he sees it in their eyes every time she comes over. Child innocence and love can’t be hidden; it’s too pure and genuine, and he knows she’d be a fool to ignore it.

“Don’t work Wanda too hard,” Laura warns in a wavering voice. “She is an adult, you know. And you’re a very overprotective father.”

Clint manages to laugh. “I won’t. Promise.”

Laura hugs Natasha, and then kisses Clint again, and then he’s standing outside on the porch with two duffel bags and a cooler of food watching Laura close the door, a sad smile on her face as she clutches two children under one arm, and holds her stomach with the other.

It’s only when they board the quinjet and get in the air that Clint realizes he’s missing something pretty damn essential.

“Hey.” He twists around, swearing quietly at the painful motion. “Where’s my bow?”

“You’ll get it back,” Natasha answers. Clint opens his mouth to respond, and finds he has no words.

“You confiscated my _bow_?”

“You don’t need it,” Natasha replies smoothly. Clint can’t help it; he reaches out and slams the control panel of the quinjet, hitting the buttons he knows won’t be affected because they’re always in lock mode during flight.

“What the fuck, Nat! Are you kidding me? How am I supposed to teach Wanda?”

“By talking to her,” Natasha replies without missing a beat. “You can talk to anyone for hours, so I’m sure it won’t be a problem. You can focus on marksmanship, stealth, and refine her spy skills -- all things she needs to learn before she goes out in the field in a non-controlled environment. Remember what I said?”

 _I think you know that she needs guidance and trust more than she needs to learn how to throw a successful punch._ “Yeah,” he grumbles. “But it’s my _bow_.”

“Does Wanda use a bow?”

“Nat, that’s not the _point_!”

She gives him another eye roll, the one that signals _I’m done with you_ , and he slumps back in his seat with his still healing shoulder jutted to the side. Natasha looks over and stifles a laugh.

“Clint. Stop being five.”

“I like sitting this way,” he grumbles, turning his head to stare out the windshield.

Natasha snorts. “You’re acting like Cooper when Laura takes away his favorite toy before dinner.”

“No, I’m taking in the view,” he responds, trying not to dwell on her words and the fact that she’s right. “For example, my favorite tree is over there. And my favorite cow pasture is over there. And in a few minutes, we’ll pass my favorite windmill, the red one with the pointy roof.”

Natasha laughs, and Clint finds himself laughing too. He realizes that it’s the first time he’s laughed in awhile, when it hasn’t been Cooper or Lila or Laura making him laugh, and he can’t figure out what that means.

 

***

 

They land back in New York just as the evening is starting to settle over the New Avengers Facility. Clint exits the quinjet and looks up in a bit of awe; despite Natasha’s pictures, this is the first time he’s seeing the place. He has to admit, it’s impressive -- SHIELD had never been anything special, at least on the outside. Literally hidden in plain sight, a lot of the bells and whistles of the facility were all internal, large shiny training rooms, high ceilings, and dozens of corridors. He hadn’t seen the Triskelion, but he imagines this is what Natasha felt like when she worked there.

“It reminds me of the Triskelion, a little bit,” Natasha says as she comes up beside him, as if she’s reading his mind. “Tony keeps talking about how this will be our new home base, now that there are more of us, and Stark Tower is mostly Pepper and her work.” Natasha waves her hands around the grounds. “Sometimes he talks about moving out of there all together.”

Clint snorts. “Yeah, okay. That’s something I’ll believe when I see it.”

Natasha smiles. “Come on. I’m starving, and I’ll see if we can hunt something down in the kitchen.”

Clint follows her as she walks inside, feeling a little apprehensive. But there’s a feeling rolling around in his stomach that he can’t ignore; it feels _familiar_ , walking through this place with Natasha, even in civilian clothes and even though he’s ever been here before. The strong, confident gait of Natasha as she leads him through the door, the smell of newly furbished walls mingling with the slightest stench of sweat, murmured hushed voices as everyone tries to do their respective work but at the same time, keep it secret -- it’s all things he’s been living with his entire life, and even though it’s in a different setting, it’s still what he knows like the back of his hand.

“I’d give you a tour, but I’m assuming by your expression you can find everything,” Natasha teases lightly.

Clint turns to look at her guiltily. “That obvious?”

Natasha shrugs. “Only because I know how to read you.” She rubs his good shoulder. “Don’t worry. I’m sure you’ll find all the good hiding places in no time.”

“Very funny,” Clint mutters. As they round the corner and enter the communal kitchen, he’s met with the back of a person with long dark hair. It’s softer than it had been the last time he saw her, and she’s dressed in more conservative clothes, the kind that Laura might wear around the house -- but he would know that stance everywhere, even holding a Hot Pocket.

“Where’s the party?” he asks loudly. Wanda turns, her eyes widening as she focuses on his face.

“Clint.” Her face lights up considerably as she walks forward, dropping her food on the counter so she can hug him. Clint winces as she presses herself into his chest and squeezes his shoulder.

“Ow.”

Wanda looks up in concern, stepping away, and he shakes his head.

“It’s okay. Just had a little accident at home. I’m almost healed.” He rotates his arm to prove his point, even though the motion still stings. “You working hard?”

Wanda nods, and glances shyly at Natasha. “I think I am learning okay.”

“She’s doing really well,” Natasha confirms, grabbing a bottle of Gatorade from the fridge. “Still needs to work on not taking the power out, though.”

Wanda looks down at the floor, biting her lip. “Sometimes when I get angry, I move things without thinking about it.”

“Hey, there are worse things that could happen,” Clint offers. “My son knocks over entire bowls of food, and he does it without even trying.”

“I thought you would be with them,” Wanda says as she picks up her Hot Pocket and bites into it. “At home.”

Clint tries to ignore the skepticism in Wanda’s voice. “Just a short trip,” he responds. “Laura’s due soon, so I figured I’d take some time to myself before three kids completely ruin my sleep schedule.” The lie comes out so easily, he actually almost believes it for a moment.

“I am not a kid,” Wanda says defensively. “You did not have to come here to take care of me.”

“Ha.” Clint scoffs and takes the Gatorade that Natasha is holding out. “Is that what you think I’m doing? Besides, if I wanted to look after a kid, I would’ve stayed home.”

“So you came to babysit, then?”

Clint smiles widely. “No. I came to train you.”

 

***

 

There’s no one really around, at least this night -- Steve and Sam are out doing some training, which Clint knows from Natasha is really just “finding Steve’s long-lost brainwashed friend who has seemingly disappeared.” Vision and Wanda are watching a movie in the basement, where Stark’s put in a huge entertainment system for relaxation purposes. (“I don’t know why he thinks we can’t just relax by _reading_ ,” Natasha tells Clint as she gives him an abridged tour.) Stark is in Manhattan more than he’s upstate, and the rest of the people who Clint knows work and study here -- Hill, Selvig, Fury, Cho -- only show up when there’s work to be done.

So when Natasha shows Clint to his room -- nice and big, all things considered; it even has its own bathroom and a large closet and plenty of room to stretch when he’s doing his exercises to warm up before a sparring session -- he doesn’t expect her to deliver him and then tell him to have a good night, that she’ll see him tomorrow.

“Married man doesn’t get the girl, huh?” he jokes as he plops down on the bed.

Natasha, for her part, looks slightly uncomfortable. “I mean, I have my own room here.”

“Yeah, I know. I just figured --”

“Oh.” Natasha nods quickly. “Right.”

Clint blinks; he hadn’t expected her to back off so quickly. It wasn’t like it was exactly taboo to be in a bed together after all these years when they were away from the farm.

“No, I mean, you’re welcome to stay. It’s a big room.” He bounces on the mattress a little. “Bed seems nice.”

Natasha glances at the floor. “Probably better that I don’t,” she says slowly. “I don’t want someone walking in on us -- they know about Laura now, it could get weird. And Vision can walk through walls.”

“Ugh.” Clint makes a face. “Remind me never to masturbate here, then.”

Natasha makes a face back. “That’s disgusting, Barton. And _not_ a thing I need to imagine.”

“Right, like you’ve never seen me naked,” Clint throws back, because of course Natasha has seen him naked. Hell, Natasha has ordered him to take off his pants more than once, just so she could clean a wound that’s gotten infected. “Come on. I just got back, and now you’re going to rush off and go to sleep?”

She won’t, he knows -- she’ll go down to the gym, or she’ll watch a movie in her own room, or she’ll take a walk. But he’ll call her out on it anyway.

“Offer still stands,” he presses when she doesn’t respond. “I bet there’s popcorn somewhere in that kitchen.”

Natasha’s lips turn up slightly, and she sighs, as if Clint’s worn her down and she has to make a show of it. Sometimes, he marvels at how much her and Laura are alike without even trying to be.

“Only if the old _Mummy_ movie is on Netflix. If I see any more trailers about the new one, I’m going to throw my knife at the television.”

Clint laughs. “Deal. But you get the popcorn.”

Natasha rolls her eyes, but leaves the room, and a few minutes later Clint’s sharp ears pick up on the sound of soft cracks. When Natasha comes back, taking longer than Clint’s expected, she’s changed from her travel clothes into a pair of blue sweatpants and a Fleetwood Mac t-shirt with ketchup stains on the sleeve.

“Front row seat for the original _Mummy_ ,” Clint says, patting the space next to him on the bed as he palms the remote. Natasha sits down, drawing her legs up into a triangle.

“You’ve been in a good mood all day.”

He has, he realizes. He hasn’t been fidgety, and he hasn’t been looking at his watch, wondering when it’s going to get dark enough to go out. And even though he hasn’t actually done any kind of fighting or work all day, he feels _settled_.

He immediately feels guilty, because he remembers he told Laura he’d call her.

“I promised Laura I’d call her,” he says, getting up from the bed. Natasha leans back, hair billowing around her skull like a halo of spilled blood.

“Invite into your bed and leave me,” she teases gently. “I see how it is.”

He shoves her legs away playfully and grabs for his cell phone. “Don’t eat all the popcorn,” he warns as he walks into the bathroom, closing the door. It’s weird to feel like he needs privacy; he wasn’t going to say anything that Natasha did or didn’t know, or anything that he would feel uncomfortable about her knowing. But he likes giving himself the space, anyway.

“Told you I’d call you at every moment,” he says when Laura picks up, and he can almost see her smile.

“I’ve learned to trust you by now,” she says with a small sigh. Clint imagines her easing herself into a chair, or maybe onto the couch -- Laura barely stood for more than half an hour at a time anymore, unless she was pushing herself to make dinner or put her children to bed.

“How’s Nate?”

“Kicking a lot,” Laura responds. “Almost too much. Either he’s having a lot of fun in there, or he’s really into karate.”

“Could be both,” Clint suggests.

Laura groans. “Just what I need. Another accident-prone Barton child.”

“Hey, Lila was pretty good,” Clint protests. “Mostly. I mean, before she hit her walking phase.”

“Mostly. So how is it there?”

Clint sits down on the toilet seat and glances at the walls. “It’s a nice place. Reminds me of SHIELD a little bit. Big, lots of space...I saw Wanda. She was really happy to see me. And I guess tomorrow I’m gonna get the full tour, you know, all the training rooms and stuff. Nat just showed me the bare bones, but lemme tell you, Stark didn’t skimp when it came to renovating this place.” He realizes he’s been talking quickly, almost babbling, and that Laura has been silent on the other end.

“Sorry,” he apologizes. “I know you don’t like when I talk about work so much.”

“No,” Laura says quietly. “It’s just...you sound happy.”

Clint swallows, because it was one thing for Natasha to notice it -- she noticed everything -- but it was another thing for Laura to notice it, having been tuned into the difference between Clint at home and Clint out of the house.

“Is that a good thing?”

“I think so,” she says slowly. “For now.” She clears her throat. “Hey, I promised the kids they could say goodnight. You still up for stories?”

“Like you have to ask?”

It’s another brief moment before Cooper is saying hi, and Lila is asking about his new friends. In the time it takes them to chatter about animals and school, Clint has walked back into the room, grabbed his well-worn copy of _The Boxcar Kids_ (and, okay, maybe Cooper’s obsession with sitting in random places was getting out of hand, but it’s not like he wasn’t being influenced), and has settled on the floor for a round of reading over speakerphone. Natasha stays on the bed, until she moves, joining him and pressing up against him, and Clint only feels a little guilty about finding himself completely content while Laura is miles away.

And yet, it’s not the first time this situation has happened -- Natasha sitting close to him or Laura while they read to their kids, occasionally helping with voices. It’s happened multiple times over the years, especially as Natasha’s role in the family became less “Clint’s partner” and more “Auntie Nat.” Hell, Natasha was sometimes better at putting his own children to sleep than he was, and he’d had years of practice doing it.

But Laura had always been there. In another room, watching from the doorway, down the hall. She had always been at home with them, and he’d always felt okay, because she was there, and this was normal, even if it sometimes didn’t feel normal to have your partner so invested in your domestic life.

By the time they’ve finished a chapter, and Laura has sleepily said her I love yous and Lila and Cooper have sung theirs into the receiver, Natasha has comfortably fallen asleep against his shoulder. Clint glances at the barely eaten bowl of popcorn that’s sitting next to him and debates putting on the movie for kicks, or even moving. Instead, he reaches up for the blanket on the bed and pulls it down over them, leaning his head back against the bed frame and closing his eyes.

 

***

 

Wanda arrives for her first official day of training in a tank top, gym pants, with her dark hair pulled back into a long ponytail. Fresh faced, with no rings on her fingers or eyeliner around her lids, she looks less like the formidable Scarlet Witch and more like a teenager who’s never seen battle before. It jars him, because he realizes he’s never really seen her outside of avenging.

“I hope you’re a good teacher,” Wanda teases as she walks towards the center of the gym. She glances up and down, furrowing her brow as she takes in his trackpants and old t-shirt from the Iowa State Fair. “Where is your bow?”

“Don’t need it,” Clint says, trying not to answer in a way that sounds whiney. He doesn’t exactly agree with Natasha’s whole confiscation thing, but, whatever -- he was here, he was doing things he wanted to be doing, and Laura was understanding, so he should take his blessings where he could get them. “We’re not doing fight training today.”

“So what are we doing?” Wanda asks. “Are you going to ask me to move things with my mind?”

Clint nods towards the large door behind him. “What do you see?”

Wanda stares at him, confused, and then turns her head. “A door,” she says, letting her eyes come to rest on the heavy panel closing off the training room.

“No, tell me again,” Clint presses. “What do you _see_?”

Wanda’s frown deepens, and Clint crosses his arm and waits.

“A hinge,” she says slowly. “The door is not closed all the way. I can see the way it is angled.”

“Three hinges, actually,” Clint says as Wanda turns back around. “One at the top and one at the bottom, and one hidden in the middle. It’s designed to be invisible, but you can tell it’s there when the door moves. And the way the door is protruding means it’s not closed all the way, but it also means it’s not closed because it’s too heavy to lock, which means it can’t be opened easily when it _is_ locked.”

Wanda inclines her head. “I can open the door with my mind.”

“You can,” Clint agrees. “But when you’re defending yourself, you can’t rely on your powers. You have to know how to defend yourself physically, and you gotta know how to think on your feet. Notice things that can be used against you, or that you can use in your advantage. In a real fight, that’s how you gain traction. For example: without your powers, you’d be trapped if that door closed. You couldn’t get it open. You don’t have the security protocols and there’s also an override system here that takes about ten monkeys to crack. So what would you do if you had to escape?”

He’s surprised how easily he’s able to talk; he’s used to teaching and mentoring in this way but he’d always had his bow, or he’s been teaching real self-defense, in the form of fists and kicks. Wanda looks uncomfortable, and scrunches up her nose.

“Vents?”

“How would you get up there?”

Wanda shifts her gaze to the far corner of the room. “I do not use the vents. I take the barbells in the corner.”

“You gonna lift them with your mind? By the time you get there, your attacker could have you on the ground already.”

Wanda sets her lips in a straight, frustrated line, and Clint sighs.

“Thinking about this stuff needs to become second nature,” he continues. “You need to always be alert. You can’t rely on your powers, especially when you’re in the field. _Especially_ when you haven’t been in the field long enough to know how powerful you can be if there are outside factors affecting your fighting.” He stops and takes a breath, letting it out slowly. “Sorry. I’m -- am I getting too dad for you? I do that sometimes.”

Wanda shakes her head. “Only a little.” She smiles tentatively. “But I want to learn more.”

Clint smiles back. “Good. Because we’re just getting started.”

 

***

 

After his session with Wanda, Clint goes to find Natasha.

She had left in the middle of the night -- he’d woken up with a sore shoulder on his good side, as well as a crick in his neck from falling asleep at an awkward angle. He hadn’t felt annoyed, but he had felt a little alone. He’d chalked it up to being in bed by himself for the first time in awhile.

Clint wanders through the building, meandering aimlessly, until he spies her sitting outside on the upper level’s wide balcony, legs out and a folder spread open across her lap.

“Where’d you run off to?” he asks, shielding his eyes against the sun.

“You snore too much,” Natasha replies casually. She doesn’t look up, but Clint can see a hint of a grin lifting one side of her mouth.

“Bad habits. Coop’s starting to do the same thing...I can’t get rid of it. Laura’s doomed.” He sits down next to her and stretches out. “Whatcha reading?”

“Mission briefs.” Natasha closes the folder and hands it over, and Clint raises his eyebrows as he opens it.

“There are no missions.”

“There will be,” she responds. “Soon. Fury may be underground and SHIELD may be gone and the Avengers may be taking a break, but the world isn’t.”

“Guess not,” Clint agrees, staring out over the balcony. Stark’s chosen his facility in a pretty remote place, but it’s a good one -- lots of trees and a bright, open sky, tons of room for flying and sparring and training. Natasha had told him that the place was originally a storage unit that Stark had owned (obviously) and refurbished, and new security measures meant it was pretty well hidden on radars and satellites -- at the very least, it still looked like an abandoned old warehouse and it was somewhere they could practice their powers safely, miles from any real danger.

“How was Wanda?”

Clint thinks for a moment. “Good. You’re right -- she needs work when it comes to her fighting style. She’s not trained for real battles or attacks.”

“I know,” Natasha says a little smugly with that edge to her voice that means _I’m always right_. “And how are you?”

“I think it’s a little too soon to tell,” he admits, because he’s not sure how to answer. He’s happier, and he hasn’t been pressed with the urge to run off and fuck shit up in one way or another, which he supposes is an improvement. But he’s not really sure how he _is_.

“I see.” Natasha sounds non-committal. “Well, I’ve been looking at these reports all morning and I could be up for a session, if you’re not too tired.”

 _Can’t figure out your words, therefore, we should talk with our bodies_. It was so predictable, Clint realizes he should have known what he expected when he answered.

“Now that you mention it, I could use a good excuse to hit something,” Clint says as Natasha closes the folder and gets up. He extends his hand and she pulls him easily to his feet, something that he’s always been impressed about; the way she’s able to easily handle him despite his own strength. She was no wallflower, but he wasn’t exactly skin and bones, either.

And that’s what he likes about working with Natasha when they get intense with each other, the way they’re about to. Clint’s built like a wall, and he knows that. Natasha liked to tease that he was a hidden temple; underneath the brick and mortar of an otherwise stalwart building there was goo and malleable warmth. Heart, like Loki had not so wrongly surmised -- the kind of heart that made him stop and help a fallen recruit when she couldn’t handle her training session anymore, the kind of heart that would take you out to dinner for your work anniversary or your real wedding anniversary, the kind of heart that would stand up in the middle of a crowded room and fight out loudly for what you believed in, whether it was a child who was being treated unfairly at school or a partner that no one was believing at work.

Clint looked strong and he was strong, but no one would know about the gentle father that existed underneath all that muscle. Natasha looked strong, and she was strong, but it was so easy for people to dismiss her strength because she was a girl and because she wasn’t built like a wrestler. He knows better -- she can best him in punches, and she can best him in hand-to-hand combat. The only thing that Clint was really better at than her was marksmanship, and Natasha had never made a fuss about that because she knew his strengths the same way he knew hers.

But sparring was always something that challenged him on another level. It was where they worked the best together, and there was something comforting and familiar about fighting, because they were matched so evenly. At the same time, however, they really weren’t, and no one would know that small detail unless they knew them.

And Laura knew them. Laura could walk in on them hitting each other while the kids were at school, standing on the lawn rolling and jumping out of each other's paths of destruction, and she could smile and watch because she _knew_ them. As Natasha leads him back into the gym he’d trained Wanda in earlier and starts to stretch, it occurs to him that he doesn’t really know what he’s trying to do here. He’s working, and he wants to work and be with Natasha. He wants to fight. But he also wants to be home with his children. And he wants to be with Laura. He doesn’t want to forget Laura, which is what his brain seems to be actively trying to convince him he should do now that he’s here.

“Hey, bird brain.” Natasha lifts a leg behind her, grasping it with two hands. “We gonna spar, or what?”

Clint looks down at the floor, and then up. “Yeah. Um. Can we talk?”

“We are talking,” she says in the pointed way that she uses when she doesn’t want him to beat around the bush.

“Right.” He bends down, touching his toes easily, and straightens up. “Right. When did you know you belonged here? I mean, not in the country or anything, but at SHIELD?”

Natasha looks surprised; clearly she hasn’t expected such a serious question at this exact moment.

“I’m not really sure,” she says slowly, still balancing on one leg like a flamingo. “I don’t know if I ever really had a moment where it lit up for me. I guess when I felt that people stopped treating me like an object they were scared of and more like an equal.”

“But you still thought of somewhere else as being where you really belonged, right?” Clint presses.

Natasha inclines her head. “Like, not at SHIELD?”

“Yeah,” Clint says. “Like, you were the Black Widow, but you wanted to be Natasha. But you couldn’t be both. And maybe at some point, your brain was telling you that you had to give up one to be the other, but that didn’t feel right.”

Clint knows there are two ways Natasha can answer. She can answer with _yes, and we’ve been over this, you know the response I’m going to use because we’ve had this conversation before_. Or she can answer with something that carefully ignores this knowledge. He’s praying she goes with the latter, because he doesn’t want to actually talk about his feelings in this particular moment.

“I knew Natasha couldn’t exist without the Black Widow,” she says slowly. “So I knew I couldn’t get rid of her. Even if I never killed another person again, I couldn’t live without her.” Natasha shrugs. “She’s the person who’s the most of me, and for better or for worse, she’s ingrained in me. She’s the devil on my shoulder, but she’s also the angel, because she can give me life experience. The Black Widow can tell me things that Natasha couldn’t do or know. So I could never just forget she existed, even if I wasn’t at SHIELD.”

 _But you know this_ , she adds without saying it out loud. After he had come out of his conditioning, after she had slammed his head into a metal bar and gave him a mild concussion at the sake of saving his (and her) life, he had asked in a terrified voice how you could live knowing that such a dark part of you existed, that there was a part of you that you just couldn’t write off as being someone else.

“Makes sense,” he responds lamely, because he hadn’t really known what he was going for when he started to ask his question. It wasn’t like he was going to say what he really wanted to say, anyway.

“Well, it does and it doesn’t,” Natasha says, flexing her arm. “Anyway, last I checked you were coming off a broken rib and a dislocated shoulder, which means I’ve got advantage. So are we going to spar, or what?”

 

***

 

He doesn’t ask Natasha to stay in his room that night. He figures that if he does, she’ll only side-eye him more after his impromptu question at the gym.

But he can’t fall asleep, and he tries to figure out why. He’s definitely tired enough; between Wanda and Natasha and his mental state, he’d worn himself down and he can feel it in his bones. But he’s unsettled, and not in the way that he’d been at the farm, where his fingers had been literally itching and tingling if he couldn’t at least pick up his bow. He tosses and turns; he finds the annoyingly complicated air conditioning and turns it off and on, he opens the windows and paces for awhile, unable to find a happy medium between tired and content, and finally throws on a flannel shirt and wanders down to the kitchen area.

He’s surprised (but not) to find Wanda sitting at the table, a red ball of energy suspended lightly between her palms.

“Can’t sleep?”

Wanda drops her hands and the ball disappears, the room plunging into darkness again, save for the moon casting its light through the skylights above.

“No,” she says. Her voice masks any vulnerability, but when she looks up, her emotions are written all over her face. “I had a nightmare. Did you have one too?”

“Yeah,” Clint lies, because he’s not going to tell her why he can’t sleep. He doesn’t even think he knows. He pulls out a chair and sits down next to her. “Wanna talk?”

Wanda looks uncomfortable, and then exhales slowly. “I have dreams,” she starts. “That I’m back in Sokovia. And Pietro is there with me. Only I do not stay on the rock like he told me to. I go with him. And when he runs into that line of fire, I run with him, and I try to push him out of the way.” She pauses, and Clint notices she’s avoiding his gaze completely. “I always wake up before I die,” she says sadly. “It is like a torture I cannot get rid of.”

A hardened boulder forms in Clint’s throat, and he tries to swallow it down. It stays, lodged in his windpipe, gradually increasing in size the longer they sit in silence.

“I don’t take it for granted, you know,” he says finally. “What your brother did. I hope you know that.”

“I do,” Wanda says, water shining in her dark eyes. “I am not mad at you. But that does not mean I am not mad at all.” She raises her hands and makes a ball of energy again. “I wish I had been the one to kill him. Ultron.”

Clint raises an eyebrow. “You ripped out his heart. Or so I heard.”

“I took away a lifeline,” Wanda agrees. “I helped kill him, but I did not really kill him. Vision did, after the city fell. I wanted it to be me, though. It should have been me. Vision…”

“He had debts, too,” Clint picks up, without thinking about what his words could mean. Wanda angrily hurls the fireball across the room and it smashes into a wall, where it disperses into the air.

“He was his creation, but he did not have the right to kill him!” she bursts out, her words hard and sharp. “He killed Pietro and I should have killed him, and I _wanted_ to, and I wanted to feel all the metal parts of him come apart the way Pietro came apart when those bullets ripped into him. It was _me_ who deserved that closure!”

Clint sits silent, unsure of what to say. Wanda’s anger isn’t surprising to him, not when he knows what she’s been through -- losing her family, losing her brother, losing her agency. She had been brought in like Natasha, someone who was looking to pay for her sins and start over, but she was too young to understand what those sins could mean if you didn’t let yourself accept them.

“I’m sorry,” she apologizes as her words hang in the air, heavy and dense. “I did not mean to be angry.”

“No,” Clint says. “You did mean to be angry. But that’s okay. You’re allowed to be angry, and if you weren’t angry, I’d actually be worried.”

“I am not a killer,” Wanda replies. “But I would have killed. Doesn’t that make me a bad person?”

“No more than any of us here,” he says, waving his hand around tiredly. Wanda’s forehead bends into wrinkles.

“I know about Agent Romanoff -- Natasha. About what she did before she came here. But you...did you --”

“Yeah, I have,” he interrupts, cutting her off. “So I get it. But that’s not a conversation for the middle of the night, okay?”

“Okay,” Wanda agrees, nodding at the table. “Tomorrow?”

“Bring your A-game to our practice and we’ll see.”

She smiles hesitantly and he gets up, pushing his chair back. He places one hand on her shoulder and squeezes it lightly before he walks away.

“You do not need to talk about them? Your nightmares?”

Clint turns and shakes his head. “It’s not really something I know how to talk about right now,” he admits. “But I’ll be okay. Besides, talking to you helped.” He gives her an encouraging smile and continues walking, wandering down the hall until he gets to the room that he knows is designated for Natasha. He tries the knob and it’s locked; he’s expected it to be so he keys in the code she had provided to him earlier and opens it slowly.

He stays flush against the wall, half expecting to be met with a knife or a throwing star, because it didn’t matter if Natasha was in a safehouse or a SHIELD room; it didn’t matter if she was in a place she knew was safe or only semi-safe -- she was always on her guard in the middle of the night. The only time she wasn’t sleeping fully armed was when she came to the farm. But she stays still under the covers, and he waits, because he knows better than to disturb her while she’s sleeping.

“Clint?”

“Yeah.” He closes the door. “Can I come in?”

“You’re already in,” she grumbles, rubbing a hand over her eyes as she turns over. “You wanna stay?”

He knows she’s too tired to press him the way she normally would if he showed up here like one of his kids asking for nighttime comfort, so he nods before remembering she can’t really see him in the dark.

“Yeah.”

She shifts, moving over in bed, just enough so that he has space. “I’ll be gone in the morning,” he promises as he lies down next to her. “Early morning. You know, in case Cap decides we want to do yoga or something.”

“Mmmm,” she responds sleepily, pressing her head deeper into the pillow. Clint closes his eyes, and then opens them again.

“Hey, Nat?”

“Hmmm.”

“Can I ask you something?”

Natasha groans and flops onto her back. Her eyes remain closed, but Clint knows she’s more awake than she’s letting on. “What do you want, Clint?”

“I just…” Clint bites down on his bottom lip. “Would you have killed him? Loki?”

“We imprisoned him. He was sent away and he’s being dealt with,” Natasha replies. “So it doesn’t matter.”

“It matters to me,” Clint says a little impatiently. “I never asked, and it matters to me what you would have done.”

Natasha sighs and opens her eyes, staring at the ceiling. “Even when I was killing for sport, I never took a life lightly.” She pauses. “But he hurt you, and he made you hurt other people that you cared about, including me. So, yeah. I would’ve killed him.”

 

***

 

He keeps his promise and leaves her bed early the next morning, and as he sneaks out of Natasha’s room, double checking to make sure no one’s roaming the halls, he feels like a teenager in his parents’ house. He makes it back to his own room with no incidents, and it’s only after he closes the door and has stripped off his shirt in preparation for a shower that he notices the well-dressed purple man standing in the center of the room.

“Fucking hell,” Clint swears loudly, throwing his shirt on the floor. “You scared the _fuck_ out of me!”

“I do apologize,” Vision says calmly. “It was not my intention. But the window was open, and I assumed you were awake.”

“I was,” Clint mutters. “But that’s not the point.”

“Yes,” Vision agrees. “Anyway, I just wanted to let you know that Captain Rogers has ordered breakfast for the morning, if you should be interested in joining us.” He turns and walks directly through the wall, not even bothering with the door. Clint stares dumbfounded, shaking his head at the whole exchange. Despite Natasha’s warnings about Vision’s intrusion and his joking responses, he feels like Cooper has just barged in on him and Laura having sex.

He does a once-over to make sure no one else is actually hiding in plain sight, and then continues undressing, entering the bathroom and turning on the shower. He steps into the spray; the hot water slides over his sore skin, dripping down his back and wetting hair that he knows has to be cut, as well as parts of his day old scruff. His shoulder is still sore, his rib is still sore, but the hot water at least helps soothe his aching bones.

When Clint finally gets to the kitchen, he notices Wanda and Vision sitting at the table, along with Natasha and Steve. Natasha is fully dressed and greets him cordially, and he gets it -- even though people knew they were closer than anyone could imagine, they still had to keep their distance. He had a wife, after all. And two children, with another child on the way.

“Nice of you to join us,” Steve says, and Clint honestly can’t tell whether he’s referring to his general presence or just breakfast.

“Needed a break,” he says, nodding at Wanda as he sits down and takes a breakfast sandwich from the table. As soon as he bites into the english muffin, a cup of coffee appear in front of him, Natasha having pushed it across the table. She smiles and winks.

“Do not take Clint’s lack of appreciation as an act of disrespect,” Vision interjects, looking around the table. “I admit I may have caught him off guard when I approached him in his room earlier without knocking.”

Natasha raises an eyebrow from across the table and Clint glares at her, getting up to grab some napkins.

“I heard you’re here to work with Wanda.”

Clint reaches for a fistful of paper towels and turns around to meet Steve, who is blocking his path back to the table.

“Yeah.”

“Good. It’ll be helpful to have another hand around here.”

 _Don’t get too used to it_ , he thinks sullenly, before his guilt factor kicks in. He glances at the clock; the kids would be off at school by now, but Laura should definitely be around. The room, meanwhile, has fallen mostly silent; Natasha is eating and focusing on the book she’s brought to the table, Wanda seems to be deep in thought about something, and Vision is sitting serenely in a way that’s slightly unnerving.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Steve murmurs under his breath. “She’s been distracted lately.”

He doesn’t have to wonder who the _she_ in Steve’s sentence is, though it does make him feel a little better to know that Natasha’s life hadn’t been so rosy since coming back from Sokovia, either.

“Distracted how?”

Steve hesitates. “Banner. She really cared for him, I think. No one’s seen him since he took off in that jet, before the city fell...Fury’s been bringing her reports and stuff, but nothing’s really turned up. She goes to meetings every day, though, just to see if he’s got anything new.”

“Huh.” Clint swallows down the surprise in his words, because, _really_? If he was alone, he would have openly laughed and sure, he’d feel bad, but Steve was clearly off his rocker. Natasha was probably concerned -- she’d be concerned about any of their teammates. But concerned to the point of caring like she _liked_ him, in that way? The same way that she would probably be distracted if Clint was off somewhere, unreachable and possibly dead?

“You don’t see it?” Steve presses, his brows knitting in concern. “I mean, she’s been better since you came back, but it’s gotta be hard.”

“Yeah,” Clint responds. “Yeah, no, uh. We just don’t really talk about it.” He shrugs, trying to act unfazed. “Besides, it’s Natasha. She’s got it under control.” He turns and walks back to the table, picking up his sandwich again and shoving it into his mouth. Natasha looks at him quizzically, clearly surprised by his sudden rush to eat, but he motions to the clock and she nods in understanding.

“Wanda, finish your breakfast and get changed,” he says loudly as he swallows the last of his breakfast. “Meet you in the gym in twenty.”

He picks up his coffee and walks out of the room. When he’s safely back in his bedroom, he dials Laura on FaceTime.

“You’re up early,” Laura observes when she answers. She’s half lying on the bed in an awkward angle, holding the phone in front of her.

“So are you.”

“School,” Laura responds. “And cramps. I swear to god, I might consider a C-Section at this point, just to get him out of me.”

Clint smiles apologetically. “When I get home, are you gonna make me wear that pretend pregnancy belly so I know how much pain you’re in?”

Laura sighs. “Even if I did, that wouldn’t accurately describe what I’m feeling this time around. How’s Natasha?”

Clint takes a large gulp of coffee and then puts the mug down on a small side table. “Good. Misses you and the kids.”

“Well, I assume with Banner not around, she’s feeling a little lonely,” Laura answers. “I’m sure it’s better now that you’re back, though.”

Steve’s words ring in his head, and he feels unsettled. He had been fine with Laura bringing up Nat and Bruce back at the house, but he had also brushed it off as a girl thing, one of those innate connections that females had when they could easily pick up on something guys just didn’t get. He had seen it enough with Laura’s friends to know it existed.

But maybe it wasn’t that at all. And the fact that everyone _else_ had seemed to see something except him…

“What about Wanda?”

Laura’s voice brings him back to the present, and he tries to get his mind in focus again.

“She’s working hard and she really wants to get better at all this fighting. I’m glad I’m here with her, but she’s missing her brother.”

“It’s only been a few weeks,” Laura reminds him gently. “And it wasn’t like she could have prepared for a loss like that, even knowing what you were up against with Ultron.”

“I know,” Clint says, toying with the hem of his oversized shirt. “Doesn’t make it any easier, you know? I mean...I’m the reason he’s dead. Even if she doesn’t blame me for it.”

“But you said she trusts you,” Laura replies. “So do you think it helps, having you here? The person who he gave his life for, because _he_ trusted you?”

Clint mulls over the question. Laura was always so much better at perspective than he was, especially when it came to seeing beyond what was in front of him.

“I guess.”

“And how is everything else?”

Clint closes his eyes. “I haven’t had an urge in awhile,” he admits. “You know. To just, like...leave.”

He hates saying the words out loud. He hates it because it’s true, and it makes him feel terrible, because it’s not like he woke up and _didn’t_ feel bad that Cooper had a math test today that he wasn’t there to help with, and Lila had a dance practice after school that he wasn’t able to pick her up from.

“That’s good,” Laura says quietly. “Cooper asked when you were coming home.”

“Soon,” Clint promises, squinting at the open window and the sun that’s starting to glare at him. “So tell Nate to stay put in that belly until I can at least get to a quinjet, okay?”

“I can’t make promises, but I’ll do my best,” Laura answers. “I have to get the wash done before errands; Lila’s dismissal is earlier than usual. Parent-teacher conferences this week.”

“Right. Yeah, I should, uh...finish breakfast,” Clint responds, getting up from the bed. “Wanda’s training is gonna start soon, anyway.”

“So we’re both running behind, and we should both take care of our responsibilities.”

Clint can't see her lower half in the frame of the phone, but he imagines her running a hand delicately over her stomach. “I love you.”

“I love you too.”

He hangs up and lies back on the bed, focusing on the ceiling fan. It hadn’t been this way after New York. It hadn’t been this way after Natasha had left him to spend her days in the Triskelion with Steve. Sure, he’d always felt a little bit left out when he wasn’t in the field, and he’d tried to hide his disappointment when he heard about all of Natasha’s adventures. But he had been content with his home life, and the baby food that was spit onto his face, and the caffeine he had to keep on hand just so he didn’t fall asleep in the middle of breakfast after being up all night with a screaming toddler.

Or at least, that’s what he had thought. He’s starting to wonder how much of whatever he’s told himself in the past few years has been true, and how much Laura’s been able to see through it.

Clint bolts up from the bed when he hears a soft knock, followed by the sound of a door opening.

“Jesus,” he mutters, relaxing when he sees who is entering. “I thought --”

“If it’s any consolation, Vision would have just appeared in front of you and not knocked,” Natasha says with a small smile. “Wanda’s ready when you are.”

Clint manages to smile, reaching for his coffee again and downing more caffeine. “Wanna be my training buddy?” he asks in between swallows.

“I’ll think about it,” Natasha deadpans. She gives him a smug grin and follows him out the door, and he relishes in the comfortable silence as they walk towards the gym. Wanda’s waiting when they get there, dressed in what Clint recognizes as some of Natasha’s old workout clothes.

“Today is about fear,” Clint starts as Natasha wanders away, hoisting herself onto a large metal box that houses a collection of various weapons and training equipment. “And about mastering fear.” He puts his mug on the ground and tries to get his mind off the multitude of things that are suddenly bothering him, the thoughts that are picking at his brain and seeping into his bones, making him short-tempered and annoyed.

“I know my fears,” Wanda replies. “I have fought my fears before.”

“Yeah,” Clint says with an eyebrow raise as they meet in the center of the room. “Sokovia.”

Wanda looks down at the floor. “Sokovia,” she repeats quietly.

“What happened in that house wasn’t something to be ashamed of,” Clint says as Wanda continues to stare at the floor. “We’ve all been there. We’ve all been scared, and we’ve all had our moment of fear during the fight. Even us.” He glances at Natasha, who remains impassive. “Doesn’t make you any less strong, or take away anything that you’ve learned, no matter what bullshit your mind tells you, okay?”

Wanda nods. “Okay.”

“Right.” Clint squares his shoulders. “Look at me. I’m going to come at you -- slowly, and then not slowly. I want you to react naturally and practice your fight-and-flight responses. I won’t hurt you. You trust me?”

Wanda lifts her head and meets his eyes. “Yes,” she says, her voice wavering only slightly.

Clint readies himself and paces around the gym, until he’s a decent distance away from Wanda. Then he starts to walk forward, increasing his gait as he moves. When he’s within inches of touching her, he raises his fists, as if he means to hit her. He doesn’t, though, stopping just short of actually attacking her. Wanda shoots a blast of energy at his feet, and her face is hard and concentrated, but Clint can see the worry in her eyes, and the skittishness in her movements.

“What scared you?” Clint asks when he drops his hand, stepping away to give her space. “What was your fear just now?”

Wanda swallows. “That I would hurt you. But that...it is stupid to think that, right?”

“No,” Clint responds levelly. “The person attacking you one day will probably be an enemy, or someone who wants to hurt you. But they also might be a friend. They might be fighting you because they need to hurt you to help you, or they might be fighting you because there’s a situation out of their control.” He doesn’t look at Natasha this time, but he doesn’t have to. “You need to be willing to fight for yourself, no matter who the person on the other end of that fist is. You need to forget the fear.”

“Okay,” Wanda agrees, taking a deep breath. “Then I would like to go again.”

Clint backs away, circling the room again. This time, when he comes after her, he moves faster, not giving her a chance to acclimate to his speed. She manages to stand her ground and defend herself by leaping into the air, sending fireballs down at him, but Clint notices that this time, her movements are sluggish, as if she’s not entirely confident in the abilities he knows she’s perfected in the short amount of time since Sokovia.

“Again,” Clint orders as he circles the wide floor, and Wanda gathers herself up as Clint charges at her. He’s almost in her face when she steps back in an uncharacteristic show of fear, tripping over her own feet and landing hard on her side. Clint immediately stops, sensing something is wrong, and bends down next to her.

“Take fifteen,” he says loud enough for Natasha to hear. He puts a hand on her back, noting her hyperactive breathing.

“Wanda, I need you to relax. Deep breaths, okay?”

Wanda’s gaze is focused on the floor, her hair obscuring her cheeks, but Clint doesn’t have to see her face to know what she looks like. He’s seen it in Natasha when she was being deprogrammed, he’s seen it in his children when they’ve woken up from nightmares that seem too real, he’s seen it in Laura when she’s been so worried about him that she hasn’t been able to control her emotions. He keeps his hand steady and his voice low, trying not to push her into coming back to herself sooner than she’s able to.

“You’re okay,” he says to her shuddering body, easing himself all the way to the floor so he can get closer to her. “I’m not asking you to do anything right now except breathe. Can you keep breathing for me?”

She nods, letting out a small gasp, but starts to slow her air intake. Clint rubs her back until she moves, raising her head to reveal a pale face and wet eyes.

“I -- that was not supposed to happen. It was not you. Pietro --”

“I know,” Clint says. “It’s okay. That’s enough for today, alright?”

Wanda shakes her head, her voice trembling. “That is not fair to you. We have barely done anything.”

“And we’re not going to be able to do anything else if you can’t focus,” Clint responds. “Go take a bath or make some tea, and relax. We’ll come back to this later. I promise.”

He holds out his hand and helps her to her feet, making sure she’s steady enough before he lets go. Wanda hugs her arms to her chest tightly as she walks out of the room, her movements stilted and slow.

“What the hell was that?” Natasha asks in a low voice, jumping off the box and walking towards him. Clint exhales loudly.

“Some sort of flashback. Wanda got triggered.”

“Not Wanda,” Natasha says. “That lesson.”

“I told you,” Clint says, meeting her eyes. “Fear.”

“Bullshit. _The person attacking you one day will probably be an enemy, or someone who wants to hurt you. But they also might be a friend_.” She mimics his tone, glaring at him. “That was Loki all over again.”

“So what?” He glares back. “You’re not supposed to teach people from real world experience? I thought that was why I was here.”

“You’re here to show her how to defend herself against real world threats when she can’t use her powers, to help her learn how to be a good spy -- _that’s_ what you’re supposed to do. Not give her your therapy lessons.”

Clint opens his mouth, and then closes it just as abruptly. “Excuse me? No offense, Nat, but you’re acting like I threw her into the seventh level of hell and made her fight an Ultron robot. I was just trying to teach her a lesson.”

Natasha narrows her eyes. “She’s a child, Clint, not a SHIELD agent. She’s not me, and this is _not_ me and you.”

“No. Because not everything is about you, Nat.”

When he looks back, he can say that he didn’t have enough coffee and that he wasn’t thinking straight when the words came out. That’s what he would joke, at least. In retrospect, he knows that he’s said exactly what he wanted to say when he should have just let it all go, no matter what Natasha’s words were igniting in him.

“Oh fuck _you_ ,” she spits. “I asked you to come here so we could do this together, so you could help someone that cared about you, and --”

“Yeah, you _asked_ me to come here!” Clint interrupts angrily. “You and Laura made some decision behind my back because you thought I was some suicidal addict who was going to fuck myself over if I didn’t get back to this life. Did you think I wanted to be here? That I threw myself out of a tree because I wanted to get out of my marriage? Christ, Natasha, I have a _kid_ on the way! I’m not trying to fuck over Laura!”

And then, again -- in retrospect, he’ll realize exactly why he said what he said in this argument. But in the moment, all he’s thinking about is his anger, and the frustration he has at himself, at Natasha, at his inability to feel settled with one goddamn thing -- whether it’s the love of his kids, the love of his wife, the love of his partner, or the love of his work.

“So what happens when Wanda needs you?” Natasha asks coldly and calmly. “Is that when you leave home for good? Do you pick up your bow and tell your children that your teammate is more important than your family?”

“I swear to god, Nat, if you’re trying to guilt me --”

“I’m not trying to guilt you!” Natasha snaps. “I’m trying to _help_ you! Because guess what? However bad you think you have it now -- however bad the urges are, and the guilt and the push and pull for whatever life you really want, it’s not going to get easier just because you make peace with being retired. Because things _will_ go to shit, and there’s going to be no catch-all. And safety is going to become an issue, and you’re going to have to make that choice for yourself, for Laura, and I am _not_ going to stand by and watch you destroy your fucking family for no reason!” She takes a deep breath as she challenges his gaze. “Wanda needs you, and so do I, but she’s not your outlet for this. I’m not, either.”

The words hit him harder than he wants to admit --- anger breeds anger, and he’s had enough practice of keeping himself calm around his children when he could otherwise fly off the handle. He supposes why the next words out of his mouth, instead of asking her to explain herself further, are “what about Banner, then?”

“What _about_ Banner?”

He’s playing with fire, and he knows it. But the door’s already been opened on this particular matter, and he’s stayed silent about it for far too long -- hell, _Laura_ had stayed silent about it for far too long. And he’s not going to close it quietly. Not when they’re already deep into a verbal sparring match, anyway.

Not when he had left her on a fucking rock of a falling city, assuming she would survive; and yeah she was technically looking out for a teammate but it didn’t mean he had to accept the fact that she also went to him because she cared for him as something more than that.

Clint drops his voice dangerously. “If we’re talking about using outlets for things, why don’t you tell me why you convinced everyone that you loved him? Because I’m the person who knows you the goddamn best out of anyone, and apparently I was the only person on the fucking planet who seemed to completely miss that you had something going on, which I find pretty damn telling.”

“Well, your wife sure as fuck noticed,” Natasha returns sharply. “Maybe you didn’t see it because you don’t know what the hell it feels like to find someone who you relate to. Not all of us can find someone like Laura. Not all of us are magically inclined to find our perfect match at some horse fair in Iowa.”

“Seriously?” Clint tries and fails to keep the guffaw of laughter from escaping out of his throat. “Right. I have _no idea_ what it feels like to be in love with someone. Tell me about this grand passion I apparently missed, Nat. Tell me about that ‘Jack and Rose, never-let-go’ love you felt for him. Christ, I know he’s a nice guy and all, but how could you settle for someone like _Banner_?”

Natasha remains still, and Clint doesn’t think he’s ever seen her so still before. He was used to patience, he practiced it at home with Laura, with his children, in the field when he had to lie low for a shot. You didn’t become an archer without patience, and you certainly didn’t become a good archer without patience. Your shots were never perfect because you just took a hit without thinking about it, without waiting and calculating and observing.

But Natasha was a different story. She was always on the move, rarely quiet and rarely docile. He’s never seen Natasha like this before -- stunned, speechless, angry. And right now, she’s beyond angry. But so is he. And if she was going to hit him where it hurt, he could do it right back. This wasn’t new territory for them, screaming and yelling and hurting each other with words.

It’s just the first time they’re doing it while actively calling each other out on the exact things that they’re both refusing to talk about.

“What in God’s name made you feel like you had to settle?” Clint continues, shaking his head. “You had me, and you had Laura --”

“Is that what you think I did? That I _settled_?” She balls her hands into two hard fists. “What was I supposed to do, Clint? Show up on your doorstep like I was a part of some stupid romantic movie and declare my love for you? Take you away from your wife and kids? You have a _family_! You have a family, and you have Laura! And I needed someone, too. And you don’t get put yourself on some high horse and tell me that you think I’m _settling_ because I can’t go out and find some perfect civilian companion, because I have to deal with what’s in front of me.”

For a moment, he thinks she’s actually going to hit him. She raises her arm, as if she means to bring it down on his shoulder -- the non-recently dislocated one, she’s mean, but even she’s not _that_ mean -- but then she abruptly turns, walking away. When she reaches the door, she turns around.

“I didn’t love him,” Natasha says, all her words one straight line of emotion. “But if you thought that mattered, you’re an actual idiot.”

 

***

 

Clint doesn’t see Natasha for the rest of the day.

He doesn’t expect to, really. He’d be shocked if she showed her face outright, but he’s careful enough to make sure he eats later than usual and isn’t roaming the halls of the facility as much. He debates calling Laura, but he doesn’t know if he wants to go down _that_ road right now either, because it’s not like she wasn’t one of the reasons he was feeling shitty. He wishes desperately for his bow, and finds himself feeling even angrier that Natasha’s the reason he doesn’t have it.

So he ends up back in the gym, after forcing Steve to give him the password that will auto lock the keypad so that no one will be able to get in from the outside. At least Natasha was right about one thing -- it was helpful to know he could let off steam in a place where he wasn’t going to be judged, where he could go however far he needed to go in order to get his rush. There were mats, and there were safety nets, hell, there was even an advanced first aid kit. He goes for the boxing equipment first, pummeling a heavy hanging bag until his arms ache and his fingers are blistered and sore. As he lets his hands fall and opens his fists to look at the damage, he notices that his normally calloused skin is smoother than usual, a result of not training as much. For some reason, it makes him even angrier, and he lets out a yell that sounds horribly pathetic.

He imagines himself screaming at Natasha, even though he hates making her angry. He imagines himself screaming at Laura, not directly _at_ her but channeling his rage in some direction that allows him to show how frustrated he is with not being able to feel settled in a life that he should love without a second thought. He imagines himself yelling at Bruce, demanding an explanation for what he saw that made him think Natasha had _any_ interest in being more than friends.

The yelling drains him, and also drains out the last vestiges of adrenaline that had been coursing through his body since the fight. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he comes to the realization that it’s barely noon and he’s already fucked up one relationship, thrown a wrench in another, and second guessed all of his emotions regarding his marriage and his job and his partnership. It feels like he’s run a fucking marathon, 26 long miles of exercise overdrive.

“You are angry.”

He twists to find Wanda standing behind him, and his eyebrows shoot up into his forehead. Clint immediately looks back at the door, which is still firmly locked; he knows he’s been angry and distracted but he also knows he never heard anyone enter.

“How did you get in?”

Wanda smiles. “The roof,” she says a little proudly, pointing up. Clint follows her gaze and finds an open pane in the skylight, realizing Wanda must have used her powers to melt part of the glass into a decent-sized opening that would allow her to float down. He huffs out a laugh.

“Well, guess you passed your first lesson. You would’ve snuck up on me and gotten the jump.”

“I would have,” Wanda agrees. “I heard you yelling.”

Clint looks at the floor and then lowers himself to the ground, allowing himself to take some weight off his body. “Sorry you had to see that. Or hear that.”

“I’m not,” Wanda replies. “I like seeing you when you are angry. It reminds me that I am not alone in my feelings.”

Clint threads two fingers through his hair. “Not like you’ve never seen me get violent or angry before.”

“In Sokovia,” Wanda answers. “But that is different than here.” She lets the words hang in the air before continuing. “I was trying to relax and all I felt was anger. I should not have broken down like that before, in fear.”

“And I shouldn’t have pushed you in a lesson that was too close to home for me,” Clint responds. “You shouldn’t feel angry at yourself, though. What I said before was true. You’re not weak because you have moments of vulnerability. All of us -- Cap, Sam...Nat.” He pauses on her name. “Those moments, they make you human.”

“And being angry and wanting to kill someone makes you human?”

Clint leans back until he’s fully stretched out on the floor. “It’s complicated.”

“And everything else you have tried to teach me is not complicated?” Wanda asks smartly. “That is a poor excuse. I am not a child, Clint.”

He remembers Natasha’s words, and smiles ruefully. “You’re not,” he acknowledges. “I don’t know how much you know about The Battle of New York. When Loki came to Earth, I was on a SHIELD mission in New Mexico. I tried to fight him and protect my team. I failed.” He sits up slowly, every muscle in his body aching with pain and tiredness.

“He controlled me with some magic stick. Made me his slave. I wasn’t myself, except I was. I tried to fight it and control the things I was telling him when he asked for information...but the things I did, the bad things -- those were on me. You don’t make someone violent because you tell them they’re supposed to take people out in a fight. But I did, and I did that stuff without thinking.” He stops and waits to see if she’ll ask a question, or judge him, but Wanda simply stares at him with concern and interest.

“Loki’s gone,” he continues after a brief silence. “For the most part, anyway. But he’s still there, because whenever I think of who I killed that day -- who I _wanted_ to kill -- I know that’s a part of me that he didn’t create or control. It’s just a part he amplified.”

Wanda leans forward on her elbows, balancing them on her knees. “Does Natasha know about this?”

“Yes.”

“And Laura?”

“Yes,” Clint repeats.

Wanda frowns. “That must be hard. Your children --”

“I couldn’t go home for a long time, after New York happened,” Clint says. “They don’t know what went on, and they won’t know for a very long time. Probably never. And yeah, it’s scary. It’s hard.” He realizes he’s getting defensive when he doesn’t want to be defensive -- Wanda isn’t asking anything that’s provoking him, technically -- and he forces himself to dial his frustration back.

“You keep your secrets.”

“Everyone has secrets.” Clint tries to keep the bitter tone out of his voice as he remembers Coulson; the fact that he didn’t know he had died until weeks after his body was probably decomposing in the bowels of the helicarrier.

“Was your family yours?”

Clint finds himself thinking -- really thinking -- and then thinks about how he picked up Lila in his arms, how he stared through the living room window, watching Steve rip a log in half as he argued with Tony, remembering Laura’s cheeky remarks about Natasha and Bruce and knowing that _he_ felt at that time like he could rip a log in half, even as his daughter snuggled into his chest and kissed his bicep.

“Not the only one,” he says as Wanda makes sparks fly innocently, red glitter falling down on them like rain.

 

***

 

Wanda asks for another lesson. He refuses on two grounds -- he’s tired and not at his best, and she should take more time to herself before she starts working again. He offers her dinner instead, and they order Chinese which they eat in the common room while watching reruns of _Wheel of Fortune_ , Wanda calling out the answers to all the puzzles while he shoves too many dumplings in his mouth. Wanda sometimes laughs like Laura and it feels like he’s home, even though even thinking of the word _home_ as it relates to this situation makes him feel sick.

He still hasn’t seen Natasha all day, but he’s not concerned. Natasha could make herself very, very good at disappearing, when she wanted to. Short of jetting off to some remote island in the middle of the world, she could find anywhere that would get her off the grid in some capacity, and between spy skills and her knowledge of every country from here to Tahiti, no one would be able to find her until she made the choice to re-emerge back into the world.

When he feels his eyes closing (a combination of too much food and too much overwhelming exhaustion), he hugs Wanda goodnight and makes his way back to his room, unlocking the door and collapsing on the bed still fully clothed.

He doesn’t know how long he sleeps. For all its state-of-the-art amenities, there’s no clock in the room, and he only bothers to look at his watch when he opens his eyes after what feels like both the world’s longest and shortest nap. The room is dark and the lights are off, but he immediately notices that Natasha is sitting in a chair across from him. For a brief moment, Clint is so disoriented at the familiar sight he associates with a specific moment that he has to make sure he hasn’t landed himself in the hospital again.

“How long was I out?”

_Translation: how long have you been here? Because you obviously went looking for me. Were you thinking of things that would set me off again?_

“Not long.”

_Translation: long enough. You don’t get to know an exact time frame because it’ll either freak you out or annoy you._

He finds himself smiling, because it’s incredible how well they can read each other after so many years together. Even when they were angry as fuck and would prefer to throw each other across the room rather than talk, he knows there’s no one in the world he knows better than Natasha.

Hell, sometimes he thinks he knows Natasha better than his own wife, which is something he’d never admit to Laura, even though he thinks Laura might already know.

“I don’t think I taught Wanda a bad lesson.”

Natasha nods and then gets up, turning on a light. “No. I don’t think you did, either.” As brightness floods the room, Clint blinks in surprise. For as bad as he felt after their fight, Natasha looks worse. Her hair is messy and scraggly, there’s a large purple bruise forming on her upper thigh where her denim cut-offs end, and her face is pale with a few red marks.

“I didn’t want to bother you, so I tried to spar with Steve,” she explains when he starts to open his mouth. “It wasn’t really the same.”

Clint closes his mouth without saying anything. Steve would never really hurt her, and he knows that. Even with all his superhuman strength, Steve understood how to pull his punches -- especially with someone like Natasha, who, aside from the Winter Soldier, was probably one of the only people in the world who could match him in skill. But he suspects that Natasha had either put up too much of a fight or been too distracted to fight properly. He finds himself sitting up and moving to make room on the bed.

“I wanted you to come here because I missed you,” she says quietly. “And I really did want you to help Wanda. I didn’t want to spend this time fighting and yelling at you.”

He feels like he should say something in the silence that stretches after. The thing is, he wants to say _I’m sorry_ , but he doesn’t think he can. Because he doesn’t really regret saying anything that came out of his mouth earlier, especially when it came to Banner. He doesn’t want her to suffer and he doesn’t want her to be angry at him, but he wants his fucking opinion to _matter_ , and he doesn’t want to back down on it just because he was trying to save her some pain. That wasn’t who they were.

But he could at least try to explain himself better, now that they weren’t entrenched in anger.

“I guess, uh…” He bows his head, because he’s never been good with words when it came to adults. Everyone assumed parenting was hard as fuck because you constantly had to figure out what to say to tiny people who didn’t understand the world, but Clint has always found those conversations ridiculously easy. He could talk circles around things they didn’t need to know, soothe their nightmares by promising things wouldn’t happen; when he opened his mouth he never felt anxious about what to say.

But talking with adults...with Natasha, with Laura, even with his team -- there was no curtain to yank back. You couldn’t pull the same bullshit comfort you pulled with a six year old and an eight year old. You couldn’t just explain things simply and hope no one would read into your real feelings based on your words, your social cues, or the tone of your voice.

Natasha waits patiently, and Clint realizes that she’s definitely not going to fucking prompt him until he finishes what he’s started. He runs his tongue over coffee-stained teeth.

“I’m not apologizing for what I said. About you and Banner. But --”

“No,” Natasha says, shaking her head. “What you said was right. But what I said was also right. I didn’t love him.”

“I know,” Clint replies, and he instantly feels bad for agreeing so quickly. Natasha’s face falls just enough for Clint to tell she’s been hurt by his words.

“I don’t give myself to people,” she says slowly. “I’m not like you, Clint. I get lonely, and at some point, I realized I didn’t want to be alone. And I don’t...I don’t have a lot of choices. Sam, he’s so normal, and Steve, I don’t get to have something as nice as that. Tony would drive me crazy. But Bruce, well...process of elimination, right?” She smiles weakly. “He’s someone who had a damaged life and who hides under a lot of layers. So am I. I wanted to make it work.”

“I would’ve made it work,” Clint says automatically, almost defensively. Natasha reaches over and puts her hand on top of his.

“I’m not here to blow up your marriage, Clint. I never have been. But I know what I can’t have, and I’ve always known that. I’m a big girl, okay? I can live with it.”

Her voice is neutral but her tone is sad, and Clint wants to scream. He takes a few measured breaths to control himself.

“You know I don’t like change,” he starts. “And things _changed_. I was home, but I wasn’t working. You were gone, but you were gone more than just not being there because you were working. And then suddenly, we’re balls to the wall fucked with Ultron, and everyone is seeing something with you and Banner that I have no clue about. And the more I think about, the more it should make sense, but...I’m used to having my wife and my best friend. And knowing there was someone else in the mix...I didn’t like it. I didn’t _not_ want you to be available.”

Natasha’s sharp intake of breath sounds louder than usual in the aftermath of his words. “What are you trying to say, Clint?”

“I don’t know,” he admits. “I don’t know if I’m saying anything. I just know we can’t have this.” He gestures between them. “It doesn’t mean I don’t want the option to exist, though.”

“So I’m never supposed to have the opportunity to be with anyone, just because you want me to be always be available? But you’re not going to do anything to change the situation?” Natasha frowns. “Really?”

“That’s not what I meant,” he protests, even though he knows it basically is. It’s just that when _she_ says it, it sounds less like a conversation and more like he’s making demands. It sounds one-sided, when he’s always hoped -- and assumed -- it would be two-sided.

“Well, that’s what it sounds like.” She sighs. “You don’t get to tell me that this isn’t painful. You _don’t_ , Clint. Not unless you intend to do something about it.”

Clint swallows hard. “I can’t,” he says regretfully. “I have to finish things here and go home. I need to talk to Laura. I need Nate to be born. I need to talk to the kids. After that…I don’t know.”

“You don’t know,” Natasha echoes quietly. “So how am I supposed to deal with what you just told me? Because I can’t just accept it and move on with my life and pretend everything is the same as it’s always been. That’s not fair.”

“I know,” Clint says. “Maybe…maybe you deal by knowing that something was said out loud that we’ve both been thinking, even if we never wanted to bring it up.” He glances at her, and sees the answer in her eyes before the words come out.

“Yes,” Natasha says sadly. “I guess that’s true.”

 

***

 

Natasha lets him sleep alone for the rest of the night, and he thinks that in light of everything they talked about, it was probably better that way. On the surface, it didn’t seem so groundbreaking -- the more he thinks about it, Clint knows what he’s felt for years, the push and pull of a life that he had never really thought about until it all came crashing to an end. Underneath, however…

Well. Better to let them each stew in their feelings alone and think about what was said and the weight of it all, even though Clint probably wasn’t going to be around for much longer.

He sleeps until he wakes naturally, opening his eyes when the sun is already blinding him. When he finally does get up, the first thing he does is take a shower, because he feels entirely disgusting, hot and sweaty and heavy. As the warm water cascades down his back and neck, it feels like he’s washing away the stress of last night’s fight, the angry words and the harsh looks and the guilty gut punches. It’s not a new beginning, by any means, but at least a chasm has finally been opened, one that Clint knows has probably been closed for way too long.

When he makes his way into the kitchen, dressed and still freshly wet from the shower, hair slicked back in a kind of terrible style, he’s surprised to find his surroundings quiet. The strong smell of coffee wafting from the drip machine and the humming dishwasher all but indicate there’s some sort of life in the compound, but otherwise, it’s like nobody's around at all. He frowns and rubs his face, and then notices a yellow post-it sticker on the counter.

_Clint -- coffee for you. About time you woke up. Went out with Steve. Be back. - N._

The note is affixed next to a big black mug with the words DOG DAYS ARE EVERY DAY written on the side, a wraparound picture of a beagle painting the ceramic. He stares at it; everything about the mug bleeds domesticity and nothing about it indicates it should belong to anyone living at the compound. He turns the note over, where more of Natasha’s writing appears.

_You’re gonna hate this, but I bought it on a roadtrip and thought you might want something more familiar than a SHIELD mug._

He smiles as he reads and pours his coffee, and only then does he get a look at the small digital clock embedded in the stove -- 2:30; he’d cleanly slept away most of the morning and afternoon as if he was sick. No wonder no one was around. Hell, he was lucky that Natasha had enough knowledge to know that even though it would be late when he woke up, he’d still need caffeine.

“Kinda nice, isn’t it?”

Clint looks up as Sam walks towards him, holding his own mug. His face is flushed and there are beads of sweat dripping down his forehead, and from the way he beelines to the fridge to grab a large Powerade, Clint surmises he must have just come from a work out.

“I dunno, I just always like when I get some moments alone here,” Sam continues when Clint doesn’t respond. He twists open the cap on the Powerade. “Everyone’s runnin’ themselves ragged so much and bustin’ into your business, you learn to take the quiet moments, you know?”

Clint nods as Sam drinks, sipping his own coffee slowly. “I don’t get many quiet moments at home.”

Sam snorts out a laugh. “Yeah, no, I bet you don’t. Hey, how’d your wife take you coming out here?”

Clint looks at him in slight confusion. “Fine,” he says nonchalantly. “She’s used to it. What about you and your trauma group?”

“Me?” Sam looks surprised. “I’m here, man. Gave up my apartment in D.C. after Sokovia. I don’t even work at the VA anymore. This avenging thing, even if it’s not full time now...it’s a thing I do and that I gotta commit to. I couldn’t go back and forth. Besides, that wouldn’t have been fair to the people I was trying to help.”

“Oh,” Clint says, suddenly feeling like he’s said the dumbest thing in the world. “Right.”

“Does that work for you?”

“Huh?” Clint furrows his brow, and Sam sighs.

“The whole two lives thing. Does it work for you? Cause I’ll tell you what, if you can make that compromise work, you’ve got a hell of a thing going. I dunno anyone else who can do it.”

Clint wants to open his mouth and yell again, he wants to tell Sam he doesn’t get it -- Sam didn’t know anything about his personal life, he’d never even seen his farm or met his family, so how the hell did _he_ get off assuming things about Clint’s life when he had nothing to go off of except other people’s stories? But when he goes to find the words to shut him down, he realizes everything he’d say would be a half-hearted attempt at trying to prove himself. At any rate, Sam seems to understand, because he sits down at the table and offers Clint an apologetic look.

“Look, man, you have a great wife, from what I hear. You don’t get lucky like that in relationships. Ask anyone on this team, they’ll tell you they ain’t throwing away their shot. But being an Avenger is a full time hobby, and right now, Nat and Steve...they’re trying to build this team from scratch. You know how hard it’s gonna be if you’re only a part-time employee? To build that morale? To build those relationships?”

He does know, and he thinks maybe that’s why he’s been so content to be back here -- because he was a part of this foundation, however long it was taking to build. He had been a part of SHIELD’s foundation, its early days, he had been a part of the Avengers talks before Stark was ever approached, but he realizes he’s never thought about it in that way before. SHIELD and his job -- and eventually Natasha -- had always just been there, and it was a thing that existed alongside a life that he knew he was lucky to have.

He had never considered until recently that he had to be Jekyll and Hyde about it.

Clint’s saved from responding by the vibration of his phone, which presses against his jeans pocket as it buzzes. He takes it out, seeing Laura’s number, and leaves Sam in the kitchen as he walks towards the common room.

“Hey,” he says when he picks up, leaning forward to put his mug on the coffee table. “Everything okay?”

“Yes,” Laura replies, sounding confused. “Why?”

“I was gonna call you later,” Clint says. “But you’re calling me now. So I just thought --”

“I’m not in labor, and no one died,” Laura interrupts. “It’s Cooper’s first day of Little League. I’m waiting to pick him up from school now.”

Clint’s heart drops into his stomach, and the coffee he’s just ingested threatens to come back up. “Shit,” he mutters, slumping back and closing his eyes. “I didn’t -- I know I wrote it on the calendar.” He did, he remembers, he can see the writing plain as day, scrawled in his terrible cursive over the gridded box. He’d even drawn a crude looking baseball to mark the occasion. His heart hurts more as he remembers the conversation he’d had with his son as he penciled in the date, promising he’d be there.

“Well, you’re not at home,” Laura says, sounding frustrated. “It’s easy to forget.”

“Not an excuse,” Clint replies, feeling entirely shitty. “I should’ve remembered. I’ve just been tied up with Wanda, and with Natasha --”

“You’ve been gone half a week, and I’m sure you’re keeping busy,” Laura breaks in smoothly. Her tone isn’t even accusatory, it’s kind and gentle, and he feels like he doesn’t deserve it at all. Laura was pregnant and tired and she was _still_ running around taking care of their children. He was fighting and working and sleeping until mid-afternoon.

“I wanna talk to him,” he says. “When he gets in the car.”

“Of course,” Laura replies, her voice rising over the sound of honking horns. She slams on her own horn in response and then lets out a long sigh. “Sorry. That wasn’t in response to you. None of these mothers know how to drive.”

“I know,” Clint grumbles. “I hate that fucking pick-up line. Plus, Amber’s mom always tries to hit on me, no matter how many times I show her my ring.”

Laura laughs. “Guess that’s the problem with having a hot husband,” she says over the sound of a door opening. “Hey, Coop. Guess what? Dad’s on the phone.”

“Is he coming to the game?” Cooper asks excitedly, and Clint imagines his face lighting up, small hands reaching out so he can grasp the phone. He closes his eyes as guilt continues to roll through his body, a tidal wave of emotion.

“Dad!”

“Hey, buddy.” He tries to channel his voice into a tone that sounds more positive than he feels. “Look, I know I said I would come to your game. But it turns out I’m still at work for a little bit longer.”

“Oh.” Cooper sounds instantly disappointed, and Clint sighs.

“I’m really sorry I can’t be there,” he continues. “I know how important it is.”

“It’s okay,” Cooper answers, and Clint shakes his head even though he knows his son can’t see him.

“No, it’s not. I’m your dad, and I’m supposed to be there for you, and I broke this promise. But I want you to know how much I wish I could be there, and I’ll make it up to you when I get home. I swear.”

“No, it’s really okay,” Cooper says, sounding both resigned and somber. “Mom said that you’re not here with me because this is how you’re a good dad. By not being around sometimes.”

Clint blinks rapidly at the empty wall in front of him. “She said that?”

“Yeah,” Cooper says. “But you still love us and all that, even though you can’t be here.”

Clint nods, layers of mist coating his eyes. “I do, so much. You have no idea, buddy.”

“Can I have mom tape the game so you can see it when you come home?”

Clint tries to smile. “Yeah. I’d like that a lot.”

“Cool. Love you, dad.”

“Love you too,” Clint answers as Laura’s voice travels over the line again, almost too quickly.

“I’d put you on bluetooth but I’ve got my hands full with trying to get out of this parking lot without killing myself. Call you later?”

“Yeah,” Clint says. His eyes travel around the room slowly, landing back on his coffee cup. “Yeah.”

“Alright. I love you.”

Clint says his requisite _I love you_ in response and then hangs up the phone, staring forlornly at his coffee. How in the world did he think he could ever deserve someone like Laura? Laura was ten shades of amazing, the kind of wife who would apparently tell his child that it was _okay_ that dad wasn’t around, because it didn’t mean he was a bad person, it just meant he was caring for them in his own way -- by not being distracted. And Clint couldn’t even remember the timing of a fucking baseball game.

No, Clint was sitting here trying to figure out why he was happier sparring with his partner than taking care of bills at home. Why he was happier reading mission reports than book reports, even though he _did_ like doing that, and for years, that was all he wanted to do when he was stuck at SHIELD in meetings and Laura was texting him jokes and updates from the safety of the farm to keep him from jumping out of a window.

He’s distracted by sounds coming from down the hall, his sharp ears picking up on a combination of soft yelling and music. Curious, he meanders towards the noise and pushes open the door to Wanda’s room. She’s sitting on her bed holding a controller, eyes transfixed on the video game playing on the television.

“Hey,” he says loudly as Wanda blows up another soldier on screen, hitting the button with such ferocity that Clint thinks she might break the controller altogether. “I’m bored. Want a lesson?”

Wanda turns around and grins. “Do _you_ want a lesson?”

“More than you know,” he answers as Wanda gets up, leaving the controller on the bed.

He’s surprised to find Natasha in the gym when he gets there, doing stretches by herself. She looks marginally better than she had last night; her bruises are still there but her hair is washed and clean and she doesn’t look any worse than if she had taken some hits in a fist fight by accident.

“Thought you were out with Steve.”

“I was,” Natasha responds, her voice ringing through the gym. “I just got back.”

“Oh. Well, we can come back later,” Clint offers, jerking his thumb towards the door. “Or we can go outside, if you want some space.”

“No,” Natasha answers. “You can stay.” She eyes Wanda. “You’re doing a lesson, right?”

Clint nods. “A small one.”

“Good.” Natasha flexes her arm. “I’m going to help today. And you’re going to use what we taught you about fear and stealth, and you’re going to fight.”

“Who am I going to fight?” Wanda asks, looking confused.

Natasha smiles grimly. “Me.”

Clint’s eyebrows shoot up, and he looks at Natasha. “Is that...are you sure?”

Natasha shrugs. “Trial by fire, right? Besides, I’d like to see if she’s learned anything from Agent Barton.”

“Former Agent Barton,” Clint mutters under his breath, turning to Wanda. “You okay with this?”

Wanda’s face screams uncertainty, but she holds her head high and nods with confidence. “Yes. I trust you.”

Natasha grins, shifting and planting her feet firmly on the mat. She beckons, and Wanda only hesitates a fraction of a second before she understands.

Natasha comes sprinting at Wanda, who leaps into the air right before Natasha can barrel into her. She sends a large ball of fire towards Natasha’s equally red hair, which Natasha dodges by lifting her leg high, rounding a kick upwards and flipping out of the way. Wanda lands back on the ground, crouched and poised like an animal, and shoots hastily as Natasha gets closer, red light spitting from her palms as she tries to aim for the more vulnerable parts of Natasha’s body -- her arms, her torso, her thighs.

Clint watches the fight with awe, and some trepidation. Natasha wasn’t going to hurt Wanda, he was sure of that, but he’d seen enough of her fights to know how hard she could push people who showed potential. Hell, he’d been on the receiving end of those fights once upon a time. She’d even tried to give Laura a lesson, right after they met for the first time, and that had ended with Natasha realizing that Laura was more than just a housewife. She’d met her match within five minutes of throwing a punch, Laura defending herself with all the skill of someone who’d grown up learning how to fight bullies, and Clint doesn’t think he’ll ever forget the look on Natasha’s face.

Natasha grabs Wanda’s wrist as she tries to throw out another spell and flips her over. Wanda rolls out of the way before Natasha can flip her with her legs, the classic move that Clint knows (and likes) better than he’ll ever admit to, and as she tries to find her bearings, she shoots a thin, snaking line of red out of her fingers. The vine-like form finds its hold on Natasha’s ankle, holding tight and flipping her over onto her back, knocking the wind out of her. Before she can get up, Wanda leaps into the air and lands hard on Natasha’s legs, her arms crossed in front of her in a show of defense. Natasha lies still, and then laughs.

“Not bad. I didn’t know you could do things with your powers other than shoot fireballs.”

Wanda gets up, allowing Natasha to get to her feet. “Me neither,” she admits, looking down at her hands. “But I was trying to think fast and I thought I could do it.”

“And you did,” says Natasha with an impressed nod. “You’ve got a long way to go, I’ll tell you that much. But --”

“But I am learning?”

Clint breaks into a small smile, and realizes he’s more than a little proud of what he’s just seen.

“Yeah, kid. You’re learning.”

 

***

 

He’s sitting on the roof when he calls Laura later.

It’s chilly out for late spring, the balmy air whispering across his skin and drawing up goosebumps on his bare arms. The weather reminds him of the farm, sitting outside on the porch with a sweatshirt and a cup of hot chocolate, watching Cooper and Lila add copious amounts of extra marshmallows to their drinks. Laura, laughing to herself in amusement as they try to outdo each other and Clint, laughing with her, because there was nothing he could imagine that would fill him with more joy than this simple kind of life. He hadn’t even thought of picking up his bow, or what he was missing back in New York. Not when Natasha called, or when she didn’t call at all. He was _content_. And truth be told, he has no idea when all of that changed.

Almost dying in Sokovia should have made him realize how much more important his family was, and Clint knows it _did_ , because it’s why he came home and told Laura that he was done. But he also thinks it made him realize just how much of his life was fleeting, in a way. He wasn’t going to be young forever. He wasn’t going to be able to heal as well forever. Whether he liked to admit or not, he couldn’t keep himself going like Banner or Stark or Cap or Wanda. He had an expiration date, and at some point, his time doing this was going to run out.

But so would being a father, and husband. Kids weren’t going to stay kids forever. Babies weren’t going to stay babies forever. Laura wasn’t always going to be spry and healthy and young and able to wrangle three kids while she was pregnant, and Lila wasn’t always going to just need kisses and snacks and books, and Cooper wasn’t always going to just accept that his father wasn’t there for a soccer game.

He hates making it so black and white when he thinks of it this way -- one or the other, one life or another life. But he also doesn’t know how _else_ to think of it. Sam’s words ring in his head, and he knows that either way he looks at it, trying to live two lives isn’t fair to anyone he loves.

“I was hoping you’d call before I fell asleep,” Laura teases when she picks up after two rings. “Or did you forget that being pregnant makes me a narcoleptic?”

Clint smiles into the phone. “I wanted to make sure we both had time alone,” he says, staring out at the trees. “And apparently the roof is the only place I could find that would stay unoccupied.”

“Not going try to throw yourself off it, are you?”

Clint laughs. “No, I don’t think so. How was Cooper’s game?”

“Good.” Laura sounds overly proud. “He hit a single in the third inning, then somehow conned me into getting him ice cream afterwards. Now I think he wants to make it a congratulatory thing every time he hits a ball.”

“Ah, yep. Sounds like my kid.”

“No idea why you would say that,” Laura deadpans. “I just hope he sleeps tonight. You know how sugar affects him.”

“I know,” Clint says, taking a deep breath and letting it out in measured increments. “Listen, before we talk more, I need to tell you something.”

“Okay,” Laura says slowly. “I’m listening.”

And now he’s got no idea where to start. He thinks it would almost be easier to just break it all off, even though that’s not what he wants to do at all. _Clean break_ , is what Natasha had told him when he had tried to be okay with not coming home right after New York, even when Laura was angry because, “you could’ve at least called. Your children needed you. _I_ needed you.”

“I love you,” he starts. “Laura, I love you more than anything in the world, and I love my life at home and my family. But I...I didn’t just come back to New York because I missed working.” He debates whether or not to pause and let her absorb what he’s saying, or keep going and just bulldoze through the whole spiel. She stays silent, so he decides to continue. “I don’t think it was like that when I got hurt. I just wanted to keep working. But there’s a lot of stuff in this life that I missed, that I want, and...and I don’t know what’s really right for me anymore.”

He’s talking around the subject, circling the real issue, but he doesn’t know how he can say it out loud. Natasha was his best friend, and Laura was his wife, and Natasha was practically _her_ best friend. Hell, they were naming their child after her, and it wasn’t a decision they had come to lightly. Clint wasn’t blind and deaf and dumb; he knew exactly how much Natasha meant to his family, and how much his family meant to her. He’d never want to do anything to take that away from her, even if he had to look out for himself and his own agenda.

“Please don’t blame her,” he finds himself saying when Laura continues to remain silent. “Nat. It’s not her fault. She didn’t do anything.”

“I don’t blame her,” Laura says when she finally speaks, her voice heavy and sad. “I couldn’t. Not with all that I know.” She pauses, and Clint can tell she’s trying to compose herself somewhat. “But if you’re saying what it sounds like you’re saying...that you’re going to stay away and let go of this life…”

“No,” Clint says firmly. “No, I’m not saying that at all. I’m saying...I’m saying I should come home, and maybe we should talk. Really talk. Without me throwing myself out of trees or running out to get hurt. Because you don’t deserve to have that kind of husband, and you don’t deserve to be lied to. The kids don’t deserve that. Our baby doesn’t deserve that.”

Laura’s quiet on the other end of the line for so long that Clint starts to think she’s put herself on mute.

“You need to get your head on straight.”

“Yeah,” Clint agrees. “I do. I just don’t know what’s gonna happen when I get it screwed back on...or what that’s gonna mean.”

He’s being honest, at least. He doesn’t know what that’s going to look like. _Is that when you leave home for good? Do you pick up your bow and tell your children that your teammate is more important than your family?_ He knows he can’t ignore Natasha’s words, but it doesn’t make him feel like any less of a shitty person.

“Look, take some time, do what you need to do,” Laura says when she speaks again. “But...how about we re-evaluate where we are when you come home? After Nate is born, we’ll take the kids to the lake. We’ll do some family things and we can re-focus ourselves. We’ll spend some time alone. If we have to, we’ll talk to someone.”

Clint blinks back the water that’s suddenly pooling in his eyes. “Okay. We can do that.”

“I don’t want you to make rash decisions,” Laura says. “But I also want you to be happy. What I told Cooper today was true, about you not being able to come home.”

“You didn’t have to,” Clint says. “You didn’t have to lie to him. I know we don’t like doing that.”

“I wasn’t lying,” Laura responds. “I was telling him the truth. If you were here right now, you wouldn’t be a good father. Not with the distractions you currently have. _This_ is how you can be a good father, Clint -- being happy, but still showing us that you care, and putting your energy towards what interests you for the time being.”

“Laura…”

“I will always protect you and our family, Clint. No matter what happens to us, in the end.”

He wonders how many times in a single day he can think that he doesn’t deserve his wife, the person he had fallen in love with so many years ago, the person who loved him despite his terrible upbringing, his strange job, and his even stranger relationship with his partner. This was a life he was proud of, a life he thought he never could have -- wife, kids, a family; a domestic home filled with pasta nights and movie nights and naptime and birthday parties -- and he had felt so proud of proving to himself and others that he could exist successfully in that world.

What had happened to him that made him feel like he didn’t have to prove those things anymore? That he could just be happy changing up his life and throwing away that stability?

“I don’t want to be a bad father,” he says quietly. “You know -- you know that.”

“You could never be a bad father,” Laura assures him gently. “We’ll work on this. It’ll be okay.”

He’s not sure it will, but he appreciates that she’s at least working with him and can acknowledge that maybe things _do_ need to be looked at a little more closely.

“Hey,” he says, clearing his throat. “I’m coming home at the end of the week.”

“Already?” Laura sounds surprised. “You can have a few more days, you know. Nate’s not going anywhere.”

“I know,” Clint says. “But I want to come home, so I’m going to come home. I’ve done a lot here.”

“Yeah, it seems like you have,” Laura replies ominously. “Look, I’ll let you go...we shouldn’t do this over the phone anyway, and I need to put away the dishes. Call me when you know when you’ll be home, okay? I’ll put some stew on.”

“Thanks.” He squints at the stars, feeling the lines on his face multiply. “You’re not mad?”

“No,” Laura says sadly. “I’m not mad. I’m sad, but I think I’m allowed to be sad. Right?”

Clint nods at the air. “You are,” he acknowledges as his stomach works itself into a handful of knots. “I love you, you know.”

“I do know. I love you, too.”

He hangs up feeling deflated and lousy, even though he thinks he’s supposed to feel free and light. He’d gotten some of the things that were bothering him off his chest, and he’d even been told that he wasn’t a terrible person for saying them. But it didn’t help the lingering sadness, what he thinks might be a mixture of guilt and mourning, even though nothing had really changed aside from confirming once and for all that things _might_ change.

“Thought you’d want a drink,” Natasha says when he walks back inside, climbing down the spiral stairs that lead to roof access. She’s sitting cross-legged on the floor, against the wall, drinking from a bottle of Jack Daniels.

“Thanks.” He accepts the bottle she holds out, lowering himself to the ground next to her. “You know me well.”

“I think I do,” Natasha says with a small smile. “How did it go?”

Clint takes a long drink, swallowing down the bitter alcohol. “I don’t know,” he admits. “Not great, but not bad, either. She said we could re-evaluate when I get home, after Nate is born -- we could take the kids to the lake, talk to some people...she wants us to try to work it out.”

“Good,” Natasha responds. “You deserve that much. So does she.”

Clint passes her the bottle, watching as she drinks. Her hair is loose and curly, and the evidence of just having showered is still marked on her neck where droplets of water cling to her skin, a few still-wet pieces of hair plastered to her nape.

“Hey, Nat? Can I ask you something?”

Natasha swallows and puts the bottle down. “Sure.”

“What I said before...after our fight.” He looks down at the floor. “Do you feel the same way?”

Natasha relaxes against the wall and then draws up her knees, spreading her fingers into perfect flexed lines. “I can’t answer that. And I won’t. Not until there’s some line that’s drawn. And whether or not it ever happens, I won’t be the person who stands in the middle. I refuse, Clint. You’re too important to me. _Laura’s_ too important to me. I can’t jeopardize that just because you can’t figure out when or how to end things.”

It’s an answer he thinks he’s expected, but he still wishes she could have given him a little bit of proof that he wasn’t out here on his own without a life preserver -- that he wasn’t just going to throw shit away only to get nothing in return.

“You put me in an impossible fucking position,” Natasha continues, her voice hardening. “You told me that you wanted to be with me, but also that you’re not changing things in your relationship right now, and you know the only thing I have _ever_ cared about is not ruining your marriage. You also know the only person I’d ever see myself truly happy with is you, and that’s not an option for me. It never has been, in my mind. So forgive me if this feels like you’re taking advantage of my feelings while you try to figure out your own.”

Her voice never wavers -- that’s Natasha through and through, even with him but especially with him -- but the emotion manifests in her features, the glassiness hiding in her eyes and the lines around her mouth that grow taut and thin. It’s classic “this bothers me but I’m not going to open that can of worms for your sake” Natasha, and sometimes, he hates her for it. 

Because when she calls it out like this, quiet and harsh and just telling it like it is, it makes him feel like he’s being a terrible, horrible, selfish human being.

“I’m just trying to figure out how to have both of these lives,” he says, a weak response to her words. “I don’t know how to do that. And I feel bad wanting one over the other.”

“Well, join the club,” Natasha says, waving her hands around. Clint frowns.

“You do just fine, being with my family and coming here. And Tony --”

“I beg to differ,” Natasha breaks in dryly. “It’s harder than you think it is. And Tony’s just not on the ground anymore. But he’s still _involved_ and he pulls all our strings, for better or for worse. He’s still drawing his lines in the sand, and we all know that.”

“So I’m the odd bird out,” Clint says, making a face. “As usual.”

Natasha pushes up against the wall, righting herself. “Look, I know what you want me to say and why you want me to say it. So you can feel like all of this isn’t for nothing.”

“It’s not --”

“Then please do me a favor and respect why I can’t say anything at all.”

In some sense, he feels like he’s at a loss for words. He wants to agree and tell her _I know_ , but that seems like he’s backing down and placating. He wants to push back, but he knows he runs the risk of starting an even more intense argument. It’s all a jumble of confusion and frustration, a cyclone swirling through his head at an intense rate, a storm which picks up the debris of his thoughts and then tosses them to the ground.

Natasha shakes her head when he offers the bottle back, and then reaches for something next to her. When he blinks, she’s holding out a familiar looking case.

“I don’t know if this will help or hurt anything you’re thinking, but if you’re going back home, at least consider how often you want to use it.”

Clint almost has to stop himself from grabbing the bow when he opens the case, his fingers itching to touch its delicate skeleton again. When he picks it up, he feels himself come alive, blood and weapon melding together, sinew that feels tight and real; he can feel the trigger of his bow finger even though he’s not even holding it in a ready position, but something about the hold of his weapon in his hand -- familiar in this place, with Natasha, with Wanda, with the life that he’s slowly realizing he’s missed, is breaking apart the pieces of him that have become metal, and infusing life into his bones again.

“She didn’t want any of this,” he says, staring at the bow. “She didn’t want the house, the secrecy, the Avengers fame. All she wanted was me, and a family. She wanted us to be a family.”

“You _are_ a family,” Natasha points out. “And so are we. That’s not such a bad thing, is it? To have more than one family?”

It’s not, he knows. It’s not at all. It’s just a different thing, because in his case, he’s caught between the rock and the hard place of trying to figure out which one should take precedence. And it had never occurred to him that making that choice would result in any kind of guilt or any lifestyle change. If Laura could do it all -- be a mother, a daughter, a PTA board member, a wife, a D.A.R.E. volunteer -- well, why couldn’t he? Why did _he_ have to choose between books and bows, home cooked meals and sparring sessions, his wife and his partner?

But Natasha was right. And Sam was right. And even Laura was right. And maybe, right now, he needs to focus on what he wants and needs rather than worrying about how his life will change for the better or for the worse.

He’d get there. And who he got there with would figure itself out, eventually.

Clint smiles. “Yeah, no,” he decides, looking down at his bow. “Not a bad thing at all.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on Tumblr for feels and more: @isjustprogress.


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